


Bye Bye Derdriu

by QueenPotatos



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Death, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, Growing Up, M/M, Pining, Summer Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:47:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 50,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29807250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenPotatos/pseuds/QueenPotatos
Summary: There had barely been a time when Dimitri hadn’t been part of Claude’s life.Some might say they had been friends before they were even born, as their parents were neighbours in the small, coastal town of Derdriu.It was on La Casagranda Beach that the most important part of their story occured, in the small portion of sand that separated the Blaiddyd’s holiday home from the Almyra, an hotel run by the Von Riegan. As they met each summer, their friendship forged into a solid diamond, that only got shattered, with time, by Claude’s growing feelings for his best friend.As they grew older together, along with their common friends, the way Claude looked at Dimitri changed, drastically; but would he be bold enough to cross the line between friendship and fondness, or would it remain a simple crush, pushed by his blooming puberty?Time would give an answer Claude was not ready for, and nor was Dimitri.The beach of Derdriu would be the stage of their sentimental journey and growth until they departed.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 27
Kudos: 41
Collections: Dimiclaude Big Bang 2020





	1. The beach house

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! Welcome to my Dimiclaude bigbang!  
> The story is finished and way over the original word count. I hope you will like it! I've written it more like an novel than a fic, and this has been a super great challenge and experience to me.
> 
> The [Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLop3Dm7-fjPV_EqVr7NsdaRnn63-xw3Wy) is now available !!
> 
> Please enjoy the story and dont forget to leave kudos and comments if you like it!
> 
> This fic was illustrated by [ Val ](https://twitter.com/auncade), with who I have been very delighted to work with. Thank you so much for making the boys alive in your warm drawing!

* * *

# Bye Bye, Derdriu

* * *

## Table of content

#### *

#### Book one : The beach house (Childhood Years)

#### Book Two : Bloom (Summer 2005)

#### Book Three : Cornerstone (Spring and Summer 2006)

#### Book Four : Correspondence (From Winter 2006 to Spring 2010)

#### Book Five : The ties that bind - part 1 (July 2010)

#### Book Six : The ties that bind - part 2 (August 2010)

#### Book Seven : Bye Bye Derdriu (March 2015)

* * *

#### Book One : The beach House

_1 - Derdriu, in 1966_

_2 - Isabella_

_3 - Elementary_

_4 - Edelgard_

_5 - The beach house_

_6 - The song_

_7 - Puberty_

* * *

#### 1- Derdriu, year 1966.

The coastal town of Derdriu, where our story takes place, had something of those intemporal cities where time seemed to have frozen at a precise nostalgic moment of everyone’s life, ignoring the hardship of reality that kept happening all around. It certainly procured the town its most undeniable charm, and the perfect environment for our protagonists to grow.

Ordinary in the mid-50s, Derdriu was gifted with a mild climate and superb beaches and sceneries, but not as much as bigger cities all around and which attracted most tourists at that time. It became famous after a movie was shot on one of its finest beaches, ‘The Girl in the White Bikini,’ the first and last masterpiece of a cursed director who died on his way to the premiere. This morbid miscellaneous news item along with the young actress’ plastic, more than the scenario that fit in one page, turned this banal love story into a cult movie, and brought the light to Derdriu where usually nothing ever happened. Manuella Casagranda and her generous bosom, age 16 at the time, marked a whole generation of boys and men for years, haunted at night by this one love scene that took place on the beach at sunset, and flirting with what was allowed to be shown in theatre at the time. The actress soon became iconic and the beach was renamed ‘ _The_ _Casagranda Beach’_ after her plastic more than her talent. Media praised the splendour of the sunset on the dunes and hills, of the sunrise above the sea, the quality of the food. Their praises attracted hordes of tourists, humble and wealthy people alike, as all wanted to see where _La Casagranda_ took off her bra and laid on the sand, where she had her first glass of wine, the boat she used with her lover, _etc, etc._

Along with his son Bilal, Saïd of Almyra arrived in Derdriu in Spring 1966, in the middle of this crazy excitement about absolutely nothing at all with not a coin in his pocket, but with the will to work and build a better life than the one he left behind. Far from being stupid, he saw right from the start that he could make a business out of this folly, and that rich people were willing to spend more money than they reasonably should, especially when they were being given superficial things that, to Saïd’s eyes, bore no value at all. He borrowed a lot of money and bought a decrepit hotel just in front of La Casagranda Beach, and with time and labour, his son helping him night and day, they transformed the place to a four star hotel within a year, and paid back his due five years later. 

He named his hotel ‘The Almyra’ in homage of his homeland where he would most likely never return. His kindness and hardworking behaviour got him quite the reputation, and his origin became part of an attraction for the richest tourist. Soon he was known as the kind foreigner, the perfect host of their holidays, and regulars often saw him as part of their own family, especially those who spent the whole summer here or stayed even longer. It soon became the place to be and during the 70s until its end, reservations were made months in advance if not years, and some rooms, especially the one facing the sea, were booked for decades by the same families, often working in the film industry.

The Von Riegan were of those people. Both actors, they had two children: Godfrey who was the same age as Bilal, yet never seemed to get along with him, and Tiana who was a couple of years younger but far more interesting. Fierce and strong willed, she reminded Saïd of the wife he left back home.

The life of Saïd came with a lot of surprises, but the greatest would always be when he found his son kissing the young Von Riegan after his night shift. She was, undeniably, way out of his league, and he’d say on his deathbed that more than the hotel he built from scratch, his son’s achievement in charming the most beautiful creature was what he had been the most proud of, feeling he had succeeded fully in raising his son decently. Bilal and Tiana officialised their love a couple of months later, to her father’s despair, who wished her to marry one of his friend’s sons to stay in the industry. Her mother on the other hand was more than delighted, for she had long passed the time where she had been in love with her husband, which did not last as long as she would have liked - she was herself on the verge of divorce - and recognized in her daughter’s eyes the spark of true love she would have given anything to have at her young age. When they got married, Tiana brought as a dowry a considerable amount of money, which Saïd hastily advised they should invest in the stock exchange; Bilal decided otherwise and opened a spa next to the Hotel, which permitted them to live beyond their means for a time, even buy a house on the beach a couple of minute from the hotel where they lived happily, and endure the recession when the crisis hit the town.

Indeed, after a couple of scandals including drugs, alcohol, three divorces and a stay in jail for aggression on her second husband, La Casagranda was no more idolized for her beauty, but the shadow of herself, and the years and addictions she was so fond of marked her body beyond repair. Soon the beach lost its attire to the rest of the world, who preferred the attractions of bigger towns nearby. Business closed, stores went bankrupt but in the middle of this storm the Almyra remained, thanks to faithful residents, to Saïd’s kindness, and when he died people from the show business came to pay their last goodbyes and support his son and daughter in law.

Bilal shared a lot of quality with his father: he was hardworking, curious and with a wife like his he was forbidden to ever give up. She refused the help her father offered on countless occasions, saying she would never accept charity from someone who so dearly never accepted her life choices and choice of husband. Bilal’s prices were lower than the hotels next town with the same offers and he attracted different kinds of tourists that way, perhaps not as rich, but not poor either, in the so well-known new socio-professional category that was soon to lead the world: the business men.

Lambert Egitte Blaiddyd was the manager of a rising bank the first time he stayed at the Almyra in 1986. He literally fell in love at first sight with the scenery, the building and the warmth he fell when Bilal shook his hand. It was, in his mouth, as if he had spent a week out of time, as if his worries had vanished the moment he put his luggage on the floor. Insomniac, the men spent a lot of time talking, as Tiana took care of the hotel most the days and Bilal at night, never far from the bar.

“I want to stay here, forever.” Lambert confessed, the third time he came, this time with his wife Isabella. In those times the Von Riegen were having it rough, barely saving enough to pay for their employees and to have something to eat each day, and things didn’t get any better when, on a cool night of November they conceived a baby boy who was to be born nine months later.

Bogged down in expenses for the baby and the hotel, the Von Riegan were in a dire financial situation; but this night of May 1989, when Tiana was six months pregnant and Bilal desperate to find any solution to give her everything she would ever need and to keep their business going, Lambert came with the craziest idea, but to which Bilal immediately agreed.

They sold the house on the beach.

And the very night the Blaiddyd got the keys, they celebrated their new and unhoped for acquisition, and conceived their first child in the very same bed the Von Riegan have used, their hearts content about such an opportunity, but also to have saved from ruin people they now considered as friends, and who would soon be their neighbours.

Claude was born on July the 24th, in 1989. The same year, Dimitri came, two weeks early, on the 20th of December. But one could say their friendship started even before they saw the light for the first time, in their mother’s belly.

#### 2- Isabella

Tiana and Isabella didn’t become friends quickly, nor easily, for they had opposite tempers. One was explosive and independent and the other quiet and obedient, an association that reminded Tiana too much of her own mother, a model she swore never to follow. But as surprising as life went in Derdriu, their pregnancies and first borns brought them together; and it takes to have had a child as well to understand how only a change so deep and total could have accomplished such a miracle. Soon Isabella’s flaws turned into qualities, and she helped Tiana when Claude wouldn’t stop crying at first with endless patience, and when Dimitri had his first teeth Tiana returned the favour. They even went as far as dressing them identically, as twins would be, and the very first picture of them being taken together had them wearing a striped jersey and matching sun hat that was too big for Dimitri’s head, and with which Claude was so fond of chewing. It was the first of many pictures of the two together, the only proof of a time they would so quickly forget and replace with more recent memories, as they basically spent their early years together.

“Dimiti!” 

When they met at the beach, as the boys were old enough to stand on their own, Tiana would often let Claude run to his friends on the hard sand - with hazardous success.

“Caud’!” 

Dimitri mimicked him all the time, but since he was younger his attempts at running were always more infructuous and in the end, it was always Claude who reached him first and hugged him, before helping him out of his feet.

Those two were inseparable, and there was not a day that passed when Claude wouldn’t ask to see his blonde friend, and Dimitri asked the same. It forced their mother, who had very little to share when the hormones of their pregnancy calmed down, to become best friends. By the time Claude hit his second birthday the only dispute people would hear coming from them would be about who had the prettiest eyes, and they always agreed, in the end, that they had done quite a fair job themselves.

During those times, Isabella mostly suffered from Lambert’s absence, as he was busy in the capital city after he got his promotion, which came with a large income of money. But as she often told her friend, it wasn’t as if they needed any to begin with, and the extra they got poorly filled her solitude. The couple only reunited for weekends or for longer periods during summers when Lambert invited his long-time friends. Some of them stayed at the Almyra, while their closest, the Fraldarius usually, occupied the beach house, which was big enough for dinner and parties but lacked a couple of rooms to have them stay the night.

Isabella would have been unhappy if it weren’t from Tiana’s presence, so vivifying ang vital, and the beauty of this house, the breathtaking view of the beach from the living room, the sound of the waves hitting the shore who worked better than any lullaby for Dimitri - as well as for Claude, since they often took their nap together on the hammock. Despite her pale skin she never counted the hours she spent on the beach, under the sun, too happy to feel something warm on her skin to replace her lover’s arms, which she missed so dearly.

“What’s this?” Tiana inquired one day. It was after Dimitri’s birthday, he had just turned three. “On your back. Has it always been here?”

The dark spot was soon diagnosed, and Dimitri would later remember it as ‘the little crab who ate mommy’, which also took his best friend away from him. 

Lambert refused to let his wife so far from the capital and its hospital that were at the leading edge of technology. Desperate to find a cure they knew was most likely not to exist, the Blaiddyd moved back there while Isabella was under treatment before she was too weak to be transported further than her bed to her wheelchair.

“Where is Dimiti?” Claude asked, eventually, after a week without seeing his friend.

Bilal didn’t have the courage to tell him the truth, so his mother did. She knelt to face his pout. “His mommy is sick. They took her to the big cities to help her, and he has to go with her to help her heal really, _really_ fast.”

“So he’ll come back when his mommy is better?” Claude was holding his plush this night, he would remember it quite clearly for some reason, a small dragon with grey scales, “If I go with him will she be better faster?”

Tiana’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, but she put all her love in the warm kiss she dropped on his hair, wishing so dearly she was wrong, in so many ways, but alas not a fool enough to ignore how in her letters, her best friend’s handwritings got messier, and the length shorter.

Isabella never got better.

She spent her last summer in Derdriu, weakened and skinnier due to this most awful disease, and none of the children understood why the adults looked so miserable about their reunion. Claude had never been more happy to see Dimitri again after so many months apart, and could not have imagined one second that life would be again cruel, and separate them once more for a longer period of time. The last months of summer 1993 were spent in the same way as the previous ones were, as if everything was normal; and they went to the beach, they played under their parents’ gaze, they ran, Tiana read them stories while they rest on the hammock where they both fit still, and they fell asleep their head against each other’s.

As the boys were asleep, unaware of the cruelty of life and of how long this event would influence their lives, Isabella took a picture of them with her new instantaneous camera, a white Polaroid 420. She shook the picture when it got out, the black screen slowly showing its colours. She kept an album of all those pictures they took of their time together – the whole of them, of course, but Isabella kept one especially for the children, for Claude and Dimitri only. When the picture was revealed entirely she put it with the rest of them. She went back a couple of pages before; Tiana took the same picture a couple of years ago, before Dimitri got his first candle on a cake.

“How much I wish we could go back to that time.” Isabelle caressed the glazed paper with her fragile hand. She closed the album and handed it to her best friend. “I don’t even feel any joy looking at those. All I see, when I look at their faces, are all the pictures I’ll never be able to take. Keep it. Keep it for me.”

This was how the ritual started. It was, for Tiana, Isabella’s last will, and the day she left them, sleeping on the armchair in front of the scenery she loved so much but caused her demise, she promised her she would keep the album full of life, of laughs, of her son’s angelic face along with who would always remain his friend. She kept the Polaroid, and never threw it away.

They spread her ashes on the shore at sunset as she wished to. Tiana had Claude in her arms, Dimitri was holding Lambert’s leg while his father shook the urn; with the wind the ashes blew back to them. She’d never leave Derdriu, nor their heart; she’d stay forever, and the beach would be for Dimitri the place where his mother rested, and gazing at the sunset would hold for years to come a sort of sadness and nostalgia he would have trouble to analyse, for his young mind would have forgotten about this memory.

Lambert, who had been devastated by all this, and at loss of what to do with Dimitri, stayed a couple of months in Derdriu after his wife died. Bilal helped him as much as he could, but with the Almyra in a dire situation again there wasn’t a lot of time they could spent with their friend. For months, the only thing that kept him from leaving Derdriu was his son’s smile as he came back from the beach with the tip of his nose redden after he had played too long with Claude, or their children’s laughs resonating in the house the Von Riegan once habited, and that suddenly was too big, too empty for the two of them only.

Lambert struggled another month before he got back to the capital.

It took Claude a couple of weeks to stop waiting in front of Dimitri’s house.

“It’s not your fault, Claude, my dear.”

Deep inside he knew, because children weren’t as oblivious as their parents would like them to be, and sensed when something was wrong, always; they suffered from the silence treatment they were given more than if the truth had been spoken.

“I know. It’s because his mommy’s gone.”

Claude had to wait four years until he saw Dimitri again.

#### 3 – Elementary

Tiana noticed almost immediately how deeply the separation hurt her son, more than it did hurt them, as Claude had never been apart from Dimitri and used to do everything with him. School especially was hard on him, as he was the only child with a different skin and the Von Riegan were known to befriend the rich, while the majority of the population staying all year in Derdriu were of the middle class, if not poor. For all this reason until the Blaiddyd came back Claude’s childhood was spent mostly alone reading books and imagining stories. He avoided the beach where the other children played, since most wouldn’t let him mix with their group and Claude was doomed to watch the wave hitting the shore alone. Even at an early age, self-consciousness forced him to remain hidden from the others’ gazes, which he never quite trusted.

The nicknames the other kids gave him left damage on his self-esteem for years.

There was a time when Claude couldn’t leave his room and cried for Dimitri’s presence. Bilal once called Lambert, as they scarcely did – men were never good with long distance friendship – but he drastically refused to come back here so soon, the memory of his late wife too present yet. He told Bilal how each time he saw a picture of a beach, of a mention of Derdriu his heart ached, and even if Dimitri at times asked of his friend, he didn’t seem miserable enough for Lambert to overcome his sadness and to honour them with a visit.

Dimitri on the other hand was dealing with a greater loss than the one of a friend, as he lost a mother and half his father along the way. He would have a different perception of this critical period as Claude, which would mark them in different ways. While Claude associated his misfortune to Dimitri’s absence solely, Dimitri’s pain of losing his friend quickly got eluded with others sorrow, and Claude’s smile soon vanished from his childhood memories, replaced by his father’s tears, his mother’s lassitude, and the continuous sound of the waves hitting the shore that had once smoothed his mind, but which was now associate with too much sadness to bring anything but nightmares.

To fight her son’s despair Tiana signed him up in different club activities when he was old enough, where he met his first friends after Dimitri, or acquittance at least. He learned music theory and played the piano for a time, before choosing brass instruments a couple of years later when he got enough breath, and a year before Dimitri came back into his life he joined the chess club of a town nearby, where he met again, new people that would later mark his life. Yuri was one of them. A boisterous orphan, moved around from family to family before he was finally adopted at the old age of five, Yuri had learned to be quick and clever, and spent most of his childhood alone in books, or in the streets, and knew the hardship of labour at a young age just like Claude did. They had different temper of course, but the similitude they thought they saw in the other’s life brought them together almost immediately. They went out on the town multiple times before they got into trouble and Tiana forcibly forbade them to meet ever again outside the chess club. Nonetheless, as the Von Riegan were working most of the days, they couldn’t survey all of Claude’s doing after school and on weekends, and to their despair they knew full well where their son disappeared most of these times, and could only hope their little Claude didn’t get into too much trouble. They regretted more than ever that the Blaiddyd left them and Claude behind, for Dimitri had a drastically opposed temper. They even wondered at times how Claude could have chosen a new friend so different from the most precious one he had in the past, or if it was a deliberate act, as to erase the fond memory of a friend who abandoned him and never returned.

On the other hand, the Von Riegan made new friends as well, as after a wave of retirement, Bilal had to engage new people – the Gloucesters at the finance and Gonerils at intendancy – who seemed fine families. They had, unexpectedly, children of the same age as Claude, which in the end encouraged them to pursue the new friendship more than anything else, as apart from the place they worked, they had not a lot in common as well. Tiana had troubled with the Gloucester mostly but she found the Gonerils delightful, so full of life, and she regretted so much that Holst was so much older than Claude to be a dear friend of his, and that their youngest, Hilda, was so inclined to laziness, even so early in her life, to be anything but beneficial to her son, or to want her to join the family in a couple of years.

Claude still slept with his dragon plush, the one he held when he learned Dimitri wouldn’t come back for a while, a fragment of a lost time he had trouble letting go of.

On the 18th of April 1997 came the most pleasant surprise. Lambert called the Almyra to make some reservations for some of his friends, and asked Bilal if he could hire someone to clean the house before they arrived in three months.

Bilal agreed and cleaned the house himself. He took Claude with him. Nostalgia hit both their wounded hearts, remembering their lost friend, and Claude understood, this time, what his father’s tears were made of since he shared the same as he at night, his dragon plush close to his chest.

#### 4 - Edelgard

Lambert came back to Derdriu four years later with a new wife and a step-daughter, and he had changed as much as a man who had lost his first love and tried to reinvent himself with another could. Bilal barely recognized him when they arrived, with even richest clothes and belongings – was that a piano they put in the living room ? – and both especially didn’t recognize Isabella in Patricia. But they couldn’t ask of their former best friend to remarry the same woman he lost just to find back the comfort they once knew and adored, for their sake only, when it would hurt him too much to stare at her in the eyes. Isabella was still on everyone’s mind, as the house had mostly been hers after the Von Riegan sold it. For example, the armchair remained in the same place. Lambert, out of nostalgia perhaps, decided to touch absolutely nothing.

They arrived during the rush hour and got stuck in traffic for hours. Claude was so impatient that when his mother told him they couldn’t make it for dinner and they’d have to wait until the next day to meet the Blaiddyd again, he couldn’t sleep at all. It was weird, really, because he could barely remember what Dimitri looked like. His mind was full of some vague impression, he knew his hair was blond and shone under the sun, that his eyes were blue the same colour as the sky, but more than anything it’s the feelings he got when they played together he remembered the most, ones of happiness and fun, memories so dear he couldn’t wait to forge new ones as soon as he could.

They met at the beach just in front of the house, as they usually did in the past, just where they spread Isabella’s ashes.

Lambert was gazing at the horizon when they arrived. A young girl was holding his hand.

Claude didn’t know why he saw her first. He walked next to his father and held his plush still and his eyes wanted to see nothing but Dimitri, but they set on her first. Who was she? Why was she here? Her skin was pale as Dimitri’s but her eyes didn’t match his. Her hair was held in a high ponytail to protect them from the wind. She was there, and Claude could do nothing but accept her.

Yet he didn’t want her. He wanted everything to go back to what they were before.

Finally he saw him, walking behind with a tall woman he didn’t recognize.

“Dimitri!” he ran, but his legs were weak, and the look of surprise only on Dimitri’s face, deprived of joy, or recognition, forced him to halt half way, and gave Claude's parents their first heartbreak. They knew from this moment that nothing would ever be the same.

But after a while, Dimitri drops his step-mother’s hand. “Claude!” he exclaimed, and it was like all his memories returned once he saw his friend again. Dimitri ran to him like they did in the past and hugged Claude, which remained still, speechless. His eyes were back on the girl. He didn’t like how she looked at them.

Things were never the same after they met with Edelgard.

Immediately Claude understood something simple and heartbreaking; Dimitri and Edelgard were siblings. They grew up together, just as he and Dimitri did in the past and somehow, and he couldn’t help but feel jealous. Claude had been, at first, the only thing Dimitri had close to a brother, and he felt someone had taken his place unfairly while Dimitri was away. They stole their friendship, he thought at first, she stole his only friend, and for the first days Claude refused to meet them. Worse, he met Yuri and his friends at the beach without them, making his mother furious.

It took a visit from Dimitri alone at the Almyra to untangle the mess their arrival had caused, while Edelgard was busy elsewhere – at the pony club, Dimitri told him, where he could have gone himself but declined the offer to spend some time with his friend.

And that day they played on the beach, and when it rained Claude and Dimitri ran back to the house and napped in the hammock. Lambert took a picture while the boys were asleep without them finding out. Once Claude was awake, he pinched Dimitri’s side until he woke up, which got him to be tickled until they both fell off.

They were playing on Dimitri’s braid new Game Boy° when eventually Edelgard came back, drenched but somehow content.

Claude sent her a gaze, briefly, before looking back at the screen. He liked this game – Pokemon, Red version – and the fire type dragon Dimitri was fighting against.

She took some clothes and went showering.

“She’s nice, you know.” Dimitri said. Their eyes never left the screen.

Things were never the same, but different didn’t mean worse, Claude found out. Edelgard was nice indeed. She was perhaps strict, and played to win, she was a perfectionist in everything she did and wanted to show everyone she was the best, but she also played the piano and let him use hers when he came to visit. And when she understood the necessity of their time spent alone she let Dimitri to play alone with Claude without arguing. Though she rarely was alone; along with her, Patricia brought her closest friends, the Vestra, and Edelgard was always prompt to make new friends. If she wasn’t at the pony club with Ferdinand, whose family owned the place, she was studying with Hubert Vestra under his mother’s attention, or playing the piano. Those two particularly seemed to get on well, as they fled the sun more than anything else – Hubert was perhaps paler even than Dimitri. 

From that time, the Blaiddyd came back each summer in Derdriu. Dimitri barely missed any of Claude’s birthday, not until they way passed the age of playing boys game.

#### 5 – The Beach House

The house was built around 1950 before Derdriu became trendy, and Bilal remembered how it was the last thing they passed by when he and his father walked to what would become the Almyra at the beginning of its construction. The old couple who used to live there often gave them fresh water or lemonade when they took a break. When the woman died of old age a couple of years after Bilal’s father passed away, the widower chose to move closer to where his daughter and granddaughter lived and bought a small flat in the capital. Around this time the spa opened, and with its success Bilal and Tiana, already in love with the house, were the best people he could have let his old place in hands. It was way too big for a couple without children though, or for an elderly couple, but the sight of the beach from the terrace was worth all the cleaning in the world, even if it involved so much sand.

The front door was on the first floor, like for most houses that were built here at the same period, in case of rising water. On the front there was a small garden, too small to be cultivated or spent time in, especially with the beach so close, and Tiana planted when they moved in flowers that died when the Blaiddyd left the town in 1993. On the left side the elderly couple used to take care of a potager, which the Von Riegan never cared to take over due to their hectic schedule. Isabelle tried to plant some tomatoes and herbs with Dimitri before she passed, and the few they managed to grow died with the flowers, by lack of love and care. This part of the garden was brought back to life as soon as Dedue joined the family, along with his mother, and from then, the flowers were always in bloom. On the right side there were a couple of big trees, an oak especially big enough to spread a large shadow underneath, and when Patricia was tired of the noise coming from the beach she would often be found here, on her deckchair, a book in hand. 

The ground floor was inhabited except for the living room, mostly because of the water and sand and their damage in the long run. The garage was large enough to shelter two cars, a couple of bicycles and a motorbike when Dimitri would be gifted with one at the age of fifteen. 

On the first floor there was the kitchen, which would be entirely redone in the 2010s by opening it to the dining room, and with a kitchen island, so trendy in this period, and which their domestic help was quite fond of. The dining room had a large table, big enough to have twelve guests at least, which they rarely used since the Blaiddyd were catastrophic in the kitchen, and the Von Riegan preferred to dine in their Hotel. The master bedroom and a bathroom completed the first floor, and the stairs going up the second floor could be found at the entrance.

There were three more bedrooms upstairs. Dimitri’s was the second one, filled with two single beds in case a friend of his came over – Felix, mostly, since when Claude stayed the night they shared the same bed until very late – and was the only one not giving to the terrace, for obvious security reasons. The others two were provided with large beds, and as mentioned above, had access to the terrace, overlooking the sea. The Fraldarius often had their breakfast upstairs, watching the sun set, and the sight would remain in their memories for years, making them come back all the more quickly when Lambert invited them. There was also a bathroom and a cabinet, known as Isabella’s room, which never got touched after she passed, and where the photo album was stored. Tiana never could take it out of this room.

The living room had been arranged by Bilal, since at the beginning, the ground floor was just an immense garage and nothing else. He built it from his experience with the Almyra and a couple of walls, a staircase and a patio door later, the living came to life. It was by far their favourite part of the house and where they spent most of their time, and later came the terrace – they used teak this time – that they implemented quickly with the hammock and armchair Isabella used to rest. They accessed the place either from the garage, but mostly used the stairs that went directly to the dining room.

Lambert commanded a veranda, which got finished in 2002, the year before the heat wave. He had wanted to do more, to build a swimming pool or a fountain, depending on his mood, but he changed his mind so many times none of his will got fulfilled.

After his death in 2014, Dimitri sold the house.

####  6 - The Song. 

Things were never quite the same but a new routine seemed to set on, as the Blaiddyd came every Summer and even for some weekends during Spring and Fall, sometimes alone, but mostly not: the Von Riegan were delighted to welcome the Gautier and the Fraldarius once more in their Hotel, which they had always considered as friends even after Isabella’s death - Tiana sent more letters to Rodrigue and his wife than Bilal called Lambert during that time. Both were glad that Claude had new people to play with along with Dimitri, as long as it could tear him away from his bad company, even just for a couple of weeks. On this subject, things seemed to be more quiet as Claude grew up, or perhaps he was just getting better at hiding things from his parents. None would know that it was in fact a bit of both. Linhardt joining their friend group wielded a serious hit to their mischiefs, as he was mostly too lazy and slow to take part in their antics, and both Yuri and Claude weirdly esteemed him too much to leave him behind.

Claude was good at chess; within the year he became excellent. He played the trumpet and the piano quite well, but not as well as Edelgard.

“What are you playing?”

He had always been curious, and on the rare times they spoke without Dimitri he would inquire about the piece she played in the living room. This one looked quite complicated for Claude, but it was, as she told him, just an accompaniment for an old song her mother was found about.

“9th of March?”

“Spring is her favourite season.”

Claude leaned closer to take a look at the partition. There were lyrics under the black note. “In the middle of the flowering season, I suddenly feel the length of the days.” He read.

“It goes like this.” She played the melody once with her right hand before singing the same lyrics Claude spoke, playing the accompaniment this time. “During the time when it’s too busy, you and I sketch our future.” She sang.

“What does it mean?” Claude inquired, he read the rest of the lyrics and couldn’t understand where they were leading.

“It doesn’t have to have a meaning to be beautiful, does it?” Edelgard kept playing. A couple of days later she would agree to teach Claude, and Dimitri would watch and encourage them, laying on the hammock, playing on his game boy – Pokemon Silver this time.

She grew on him more and more each year. The three of them acted like true childhood friends, as if she had always been here, and Claude regretted the apprehension he had gotten of the first sight of her. He thought she was taking something away from him, something he adored, and thought couldn’t be shared. He was wrong; and if she stole some of Dimitri’s attention and affection from him, indeed, she gave him twice more to enjoy.

And Dimitri smiled even more when the three of them played together, very carefully letting Edelgard win not to suffer from her rage, and Claude was proud that he was a little bit less obvious in their schemes than Dimitri, who kept on losing on purpose – especially at Monopoly – which couldn’t innerved his step sister more.

The year of his eleventh birthday Edelgard gave him the partition so he could practice on his own. He took it with him during his practice and found someone to sing with at the cultural festival during Spring. Dorothea was enchanted by the song, and asked to meet Edelgard next time she would come.

####  7 – Puberty

“What’s that?” Claude stared at the black pencil Yuri put on his desk, between books and figurines, and the flowers he picked just a few minutes before Claude arrived.

“Makeup. Stole it from the old lady’s closet.” Yuri was trying – that was indeed the key word – to trace a thin line on his left eyelid identical to the one he did on the right one but failed, despite the reference he got from a magazine and the mirror he took from the bathroom. Claude watched him for minutes, not saying a word, not understanding really why Yuri did this. “It’s fun, isn’t it? It’s like that time when we went to the amusement park and someone painted a tiger on your face.”

“Tigers are nice. Those lines…What’s the point?” He asked.

Yuri put down the eyeliner he stole and rubbed his eyes. He looked like a panda now. “I wonder. It’s supposed to make you pretty. If not, why would women take the time to put this on every day?”

Indeed, Claude thought there must be a reason that escaped the limited cleverness his young age permitted.

Later when he saw Yuri with rosy shining lips and those black lines on his eyelids, he wouldn’t say anything; only compliment him when they got better and _almost_ symmetrical.

He once tried, out of curiosity, but his mother scolded him so much when she caught him with her lipstick that it took the will out of him.

The question of makeup aroused again on his twelfth birthday when Edelgard invited her friends to the party. She had red lipstick that was impossible to miss and which she left behind on every goblet she used, or plastic fork, and even on the cake they bought. He couldn’t help but notice how her eyes were better done than Yuri and thought he could arrange an appointment for them.

“Oh, my mother helped me.”

It would seem rather inconvenient to bring Yuri here, as he was perhaps the most incompatible being in town to the Blaiddyd, even that Claude could figure out - even this young.

“What are you two talking about?” Dimitri approached them with a plastic sword, a gift he got for Claude – they had the same now – and it was then time to be boys, and they played Pirates on the sand, paired up against Ferdinand and Hubert, as they tied Edelgard on a factice pillar with invisible ropes, and her Knights fought for her liberty. They played all afternoon until Dimitri had his nose too hot and pink for his own good. The next day, he would be red as a lobster, and Lambert would forbid him to go outside or even see Claude.

Of course, Claude wasn’t happy about it.

“I’ve read that sunburns you get at a young age could be an important risk factor.” He heard his father whisper to Tiana, when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. He wondered what they were talking about.

On the question of puberty, our trio hit their growth at different times, which had a negative effect on their kinship for a couple of years.

Edelgard, being older and a girl, opened the ball.

It started the year they got twelve, precisely, as she less and less seek for their company, spent more and more day alone in her room or with her female friends – Dorothea mostly – because as she often shouted at them when Dimitri and Claude erupted in her room without her consent, ‘Boys Suck.’ The only one who remained worthy of her attention at this time was Hubert, Dimitri told him, as the Vestra visited Derdriu only a couple of days with the rest of them; and Ferdinand never quite understood rejection enough to be shoved away from her inner circle. 

Claude and Dimitri were left alone, exactly how they were before Isabella died, and by the end of August they had never been so close to one another. It showed when Dimitri’s friends, Felix and Sylvain, spared time with them. Both briefly stayed along with their parents, but these periods were always Claude’s favourite, because Sylvain was older than them – and so, cooler, _obviously_ – and with Felix came his brother Glenn, who was already a teen and who befriended the Goneril’s first born quickly.

“You know,” Holst told them as they were eating ice creams on the low wall facing the sea. “There’s a new vacation camp that opened. It’s held by two grown up women,” He stared at Glenn and Sylvain, lifting his eyebrows, and Claude didn’t understand, “Maybe next year we should join.”

“Why that?” Dimitri said, “Aren’t we already enjoying ourselves here?”

“You’ll make new friends, try new things. They have all sorts of activity that you cannot do here. Besides, you can find more people to exchange your pokemon with.” Glenn told him.

The prospect seemed to dearly enchanted Dimitri and Claude made sure to share the words with all his friends in case they were interested as well. They also told Edelgard, but she categorically refused.

“Ah, she changes her mind so much these days.” Lambert was having Bourdon with Bilal and Rodrigue in the living room when the boys ran to him, Patricia sewing in the armchair in front of the sea. “I think it’s a good idea, you need to exercise your body while you’re so young! That’s the only way you’ll grow strong.”

“She’s in her teenage rebellion period. Everything you’ll say will be countered.” Patricia said quietly. “Leave her be for the moment.”

The decision was settled then, and Lambert himself came to the vacation camp to be familiar with the facilities and the form to fill for next year, which filled his son with pride and joy. Claude recognized a few kids he had class with before he entered middle school, along with some of Yuri’s friends, and he wondered if they would all meet here next year.

Claude was a little more heartbroken when they parted this year and he couldn’t think of why. Perhaps it had to do with the increasing time they spent just the two of them, which no matter how he looked at it, brought him more joy than anything else. Despite loving Edelgard now as much as a brother could, she never brought him the peace of mind and Claude never felt more exhilarating than after having run in the sand with Dimitri, and roly-poly in the dunes.

Or perhaps it was the hormones, as Claude started his puberty during Fall, and gained twenty centimetres in a single year. He was now taller than Edelgard.

About Edelgard, she became more and more insufferable, refusing to be called ‘El’ by Dimitri anymore, but ‘Eddie’, as her friends did. Dimitri sent him letters to converse about this most important matter to him, as it seemed she took a perverse pleasure in inflicting him with humiliating remarks especially when they were in presence of their parents, and which left his heart mortified with the love and affection only a given brother could have. Claude would reply eagerly that it was okay, that it would pass, and that whatever happened Claude would never mind how Dimitri called him, because being the centre of his attention was enough to please him. Even if he called him ‘Caud’ like when they were children, and he called him ‘Dimiti’, he wouldn’t mind. He smiled warmly at the memory.

Summer 2002 was one of the best Claude remembered for a time.

Edelgard bleached her hair white and put on even black makeup around her eyes, to her parents’ despair. In a single year she switched from Britney Spears to dark metal, a choice Dimitri thought had been hurried by the constant presence of Hubert by her side, who spent, to his say, more time with her than her own brother did.

“You’ve grown so much! It’s not fair.” Dimitri approached him to compare their height. His hand on top of his head reached Claude’s nose. “I can’t wait to grow.”

Dimitri had his hair long at that time. Claude thought it didn’t make him look any older, but would change his mind once they became adults. He would play with them and make a braid, the same as he, and tied the rest of his blond hair in a low ponytail. The Blaiddyd stayed two whole months this year, and nothing was so much different from the other years but somehow, Claude couldn’t tell why, it was easy, it was comforting, to have all of them here, his friends, Dimitri, to feel his hair on his hands, to hear him laugh, carelessly, because this was what they were. Careless. Children. The world was kind to them.

The Almyra was doing great. Claude liked the music they played on the radio. He got his own Playstation 2 at last, and Dimitri taught him how to play most of his game he brought with him – Claude liked Spiro the most.

In the first week of August the Fraldarius and the Gautier arrived, along with a young girl named Ingrid, who was also a childhood friend of them, but whose family had suffered from financial difficulties. The Gautier accepted to take her with them since she hadn’t seen the sea for so long, and was so jealous of Sylvain’s carnation when he came back from Derdriu. The other reason for her insistence, that she confessed years later, was that she adored ‘La Casagranda’ at her debut and was very curious of the beach of Derdriu where the story takes place. She had, of course, heard a lot about Claude from her friends, and mostly from Dimitri, which made Claude smile when he found out, and wanted dearly to meet him in person.

As she expected, they had very different tempers.

The vacation camp was held by two women as Holst told them, Catherine and Shamir. Both looked strong and severe and mostly proposed sports activities and nothing suited for those who would want leisure – to Hilda’s demise. Here, Claude had his first revelation as he took a bow for the first time in his hand, and after the end of their week he became a new member of the archery club, and even their captain a couple of years later.

Claude enjoyed these moments, and even as he grew up, he’d always remember those time of peace of the heart and kept them in a part of his mind; and when in time of need, he would need to rest, he’d find them exactly where he left them, and by closing his eyes only the memories would live again – he’d be barely a teen, a boy, he’d laugh and run as if he’d had twenty lungs and forty legs, as if the beach was endless, as if Dimitri was always going to run with him.

They did the traditional picture in the hammock before leaving. Edelgard was playing the piano a new piece, but this time Claude thought he heard it on the radio.

“I’m so tired of being here…” She sang.

“Thank you princess.” Claude mocked her, Dimitri hit his sides and put a finger on his lips. “What? If she doesn’t like it here-“

But then he listened to her voice, and the song, and the beautiful melancholy it conveyed.

“I’d like to…one day, join you.” Dimitri told him. He walked him back to the Almyra. “But I am allergic to rhythm, it seems, and once I tried the violin and broke the bow before I could play a single note.”

Claude laughed at that. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m afraid I am.” He said in a smile.

Dimitri halted in front of the shore where they spread his mother’s ashes and he stared at the horizon. He said nothing, they listened to the crashing waves for long minutes, the now cold water tickling their bare feet and grasping on their skin, just like the nostalgia did. When he thought he saw something shining on Dimitri’s cheek, a drop enlightened by the moonlight, he didn’t think, he walked to him and hugged him.

“Dimiti.” He said.

Dimitri didn’t reply, but the smile he gave him was enough of an answer.

Edelgard stopped growing first, but only in height. She blossomed until she got seventeen, and from here she affirmed herself more and more, her ideals, her unbendable will, her strong morals. She barely left any place for negotiation, and despite her short stature and the gentleness she put in her voice, the whole Blaiddyd house lived in fear of her wrath, and never dared to contradict her.

Claude kept on growing up for months without stopping and changed his shoes at least twice a year. His hands got bigger, he played more difficult piano pieces he stole from Edelgard. He started a band with Dorothea and Caspar, a guy who only lived for the drums, that even Linhardt joined, only theb Goddess knew why. But with too many club activities he had to resign his position as pianist and singer – his voice was, in the end, not that good, at least compared to Dorothea’s – and quit after a whole year. His arms got big enough to try adult’s bows at practice, which he was very proud of, and there had been a time when he got self-conscious about his own body, and the image it gave to the rest of the world.

“Yeah, that’s your biceps.” Yuri was making fun of him as Claude showed off a bit, as usual, an apple he stole at Garreg Market – an habit he kept, ‘not to get rusted’, he said – and he smirked with his impossibly rosy lips and perfect eyeliner. “So, tell me, who are you doing this for? Shamir? Hilda?”

“What are you even talking about?”

He rolled his eyes, as if Claude was missing something _so obvious_ – when he never! – and took another bite. “Who are you trying to impress?”

Claude brought his arms along his sides again, considering the question. “My mom?” Who else? She would, easily, beat up Shamir _and_ Catherine in a fist fight.

Yuri laughed again, he hated it.

It was perhaps, already, the first spark of something greater that would rhythmed his teenage years, and the start of his adulthood as well. Puberty didn’t only make him grow in height, but emotionally as well, even if it started rather insidiously, and left him in a wreck for a couple of years.

The fateful day occurred on his fifteenth birthday. Claude did not remember well how it happened, for they had drunk a few beers beforehand, for the first time in their lives - thanks to Sylvain and Glenn and Holst, he’d never thank them enough. At some point, Dimitri sat in front of him, taking to Dorothea and Edelgard and Hilda about, he never really knew, and magically Yuri appeared by his side as he was sort of staring - or perhaps Yuri had been here for a while, and Claude certainly hadn’t been staring. Staring? At what exactly?

“Pretty eyes, hn?” He whispered to his ears.

It’s not the way he said it, truly. It’s not the words themselves, he knew Yuri long enough not to take his words for more than what they were. It’s the moment itself, captured by his retina, when his eyes met Dimitri’s from across the table where they were all sitting, and for a second only no one talked, no voice mattered, Claude gazed into Dimitri’s eyes and thought Yuri had never spoken such a truth. His face had changed, subtly, his eyes were still so bright but his cheekbones were higher, preeminent, the same as his jaw. He lost his baby cheeks. He had cut his hair, too. The freckles were fewer, the sunburns inexistent.

Dimitri grew last. And he grew majestically.


	2. Bloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claude stopped at his lips, partly opened, breathing in and out slowly, so rosy and so full, and by the time he realized he wasn’t able to tear his gaze away he was short of breath. The icy glasses remained in his hand, long forgotten in his contemplation, water condensing and running to Claude’s hands, making his hold less sure than it used to be when he entered the room. His feet brought him just next to the hammock, his torso overlooking Dimitri’s body lying peacefully just under his gaze, only for him to see. He looked so relax, so comfortable.
> 
> Claude wondered for a moment, if he were to lie next to him, if he’d smell like the sea, if his breath tickling on the crook of his neck would send shiver down his spine, if even the few part of their bodies that would touch would burn like the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there ! Thank you for the warm feedback so far. This chapter is the real *start* of the story if I may say, as we'll see Claude is having a hard time with his feelings.
> 
> If I'm not mistaken it's also the longuest chapter, it's 21k reparted in 12 little chapters. Feel free to make some pose while you read.
> 
> The complete playlist will come later, but for now, I'll leave you read this chapter listening to [This album](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3frA_rj918&t=304s), which name I am sure you are now familiar with.

* * *

# Bye Bye, Derdriu

* * *

#### Book Two : Bloom

(Summer 2005)

_1 - Macintosh_

_2 - Dedue_

_3 - Black Akira_

_4 - Where we go and where we come from_

_5 - Sunburn_

_6 - Insight_

_7 - Lorenz_

_8 - Bloom_

_9 - Photo albums_

_10 - Of fathers_

_11 - The Concert_

_12 - The end of summer_

* * *

#### 1 – Macintosh

By the end of June 2005 the Von Riegan received their newest acquisition, which monopolized each one’s attention: the brand new Macintosh, a blue iMac that they installed in the only room provided with an Ethernet cable at that time, the storeroom behind the Hotel’s reception. Bilal was positively crazy about the computer and all the opportunities to enhance the Hotel’s popularity by creating a website. He spent most of his free time doing so, which left Claude with little time to enjoy this new technology.

‘I’ll come asap.’ He texted Dimitri. Hopefully the end of the month was coming nearer; he was almost running out of credit already.

Last year saw Claude finally acquiring his first pocket phone. It was an old Nokia 3310 - of course he couldn’t have the same as Dimitri, the Blackberry was just too expensive for them – and now that they finally had a decent computer, Claude finally had the opportunity to create an outlook account, permitting him to use this new chatting app everybody used at the capital, called MSN. But since his father used most of their credit for ‘work’ or so he said Claude only had a couple of minutes per day to talk with his friends online, and mostly used it wisely to talk with Dimitri and Edelgard.

As he logged in, he noticed Hilda had already changed her nickname for the fourth time this week. How did she change the police and colour by the way? Why did she add so many emoticons? She sent him multiple messages before he could think of an answer, or even check if Dimitri was online.

“Claude!” His mother shouted from the reception. “Turn off the sound!”

Claude rolled his eyes and sighed; of course Hilda hadn’t studied for their last exam. It’d be a miracle if she ever got to college.

‘Claude?’ Another message popped into the screen, it was from Dimitri. ‘How long do you have?’

Claude checked on the timer his father put on top of the iMac. ’30 min’ he typed.

‘That’ll be enough. El wants to show you something.’

On his screen a small window appeared, and a minute later Claude smiled at the sight of Dimitri and Edelgard sitting side by side in front of their own computer. He didn’t have his own webcam yet, but he saw some at the supermarket that weren’t this expensive. Due to the bad quality of the connexion the image was blurry, but he still noticed immediately that Edelgard changed her hair colour once more to pitch black this time. But he had been a fool to think it was the only surprise they had in store. He watched as Edelgard disappeared from the screen and came back with something equally black in hand.

Claude typed. ‘Oh! KITTY!’

Edelgard took Dimitri’s place and replied, explaining how she found it and convinced their parents to keep it. On top of the screen Hilda’s conversation was flashing orange rather urgently, but even as he waited for Edelgard to type, he couldn’t close the window. His eyes were glued on the screen, and more often than none on the pixelated face of his dear childhood friend, trying to guess how much he changed without the year, and how much he grew up. Last time he asked, Dimitri and he were of the exact same height, and to be honest with himself Claude was a bit jealous of how fast Dimitri had reached him. Well, he’d only had a couple of days to wait after all, the Blaiddyd were to arrive next Tuesday after all.

“What’s this thing?” Bilal asked him when he checked on the time they had left. “Is that sorcery?”

Dimitri waved at him while Edelgard used the kitty’s paw to say hi. 

“It’s called internet dad. It’s a webcam.”

But they had really little time to talk about the matter. Bilal forced him to disconnect before Claude used all their remaining credits, and he reminded him as he left that anything extra would be for him to pay.

The next day Claude spent it with Yuri and they went to the supermarket to buy a webcam – first price, it was round and small enough to be put on top of the computer’s screen. He hummed, all happy about his new acquisition that he couldn’t wait to try – he’d surprise Dimitri that’s for sure – when he saw the same box he had in hand rested on the counter, empty. In the storeroom, Claude heard his father speak in a foreign language he assumed was Almyrian.

Sometimes he wondered what his father had in mind.

#### 2 - Dedue

They met on the beach, just in front of the house. Dimitri texted him, saying he was waiting for him.

Claude ran until he saw Dimitri’s silhouette, then slowed down; he didn’t want Dimitri to see how much he longed to meet him again. From there, he saw how taller his best friend had become and bit his lower lip; he’d lost, definitely, and he knew deep well how his own progression was slowing down. He was turning sixteen this year but his father wasn’t as tall as Dimitri’s, there was no way they could compete from the very beginning. 

His hands in the pockets of his shorts, Claude walked idly to his destination. Dimitri was gazing at the sea, as he did too often when he thought he was alone, and for a moment Claude wondered if he was thinking about his late mother. He stopped at a reasonable distance.

“So?” He said. It didn’t seem to grasp his attention, but he knew Dimitri had noticed him.

“1.76. You?” Dimitri turned his head, a grin on his face. 

Claude walked to him with a frown, until their faces were almost touching. His nose was tickling Dimitri’s chin now.

“1.72! You got me!”

They burst out of laughing and hugged, their ritual still relevant despite their age, but personal enough to demand to be alone as they greet each other. Edelgard understood that well, Sylvain and Felix a bit less – or perhaps they did, but chose to interrupt them anyway. 

But he wasn’t the only one the Blaiddyd brought along this year. While Patricia introduced her cooking aid to the other adults, Dimitri did the same with Dedue, her son, and his new...protector, as he described himself.

“You could say that I...saved him.” He told Claude as he walked him back to the Almyra. The sun was slowly going down, colouring the sky with warm shades of pink and orange; on the beach people were gathering in front of the bar set not so far from the shore, and Claude remembered this year the mayor accepted his old music teacher to organize several concerts on Friday and Saturday nights. He regretted quidding at times, especially when he found himself questioning his skill at chess and archery, but his mother was prompt to remind him he could have never achieved anything by spitting his attention all over the place. He had enough already with his work at the Almyra and school, even if he was quite good without studying too much.

“Where does he come from?” More than the circumstances of their meeting, which he had no doubt was of vital importance to his friend, Dedue’s physical appearance was what struck him first as an outsider himself. The fact that he and his mother spoke very little and with a strong accent told him already though that their trajectory had been quite different from his, and perhaps more close to what his father went through at a young age.

“Duscur.” Oh, Claude heard about the civil war. Did Dimitri go back from a humanitarian mission in the middle of the year with a couple of families and orphans to take care of, as Edelgard did with their little cat? His lips curled in a smile without him knowing, that was just so much like him. “I was walking back home when we passed by a camp of refugees...his mother and other women were being assaulted. He got hurt protecting them, I had to come to the rescue.”

That’s probably where he got the scar on his face.

“That’s admirable of you.”

“No, I don’t think so.” Claude was already rolling his eyes to the Heavens, Dimitri could be so dense sometimes, “Any decent human being would have done the same if they had been in my place.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” And by so much. If only the rest of humanity had half of Dimitri’s purity and gentleness of the heart, the world would be a better place. “Not everyone has enough strength and will to fight for their ideas, or for what they think is right. So I’m going to say it again until you believe it yourself, but you’re admirable, Dimitri.”

He expected a shy ‘thank you’ or an embarrassed laugh coming out of him, but instead Dimitri asked him straight ahead, “Does it mean you wouldn’t have done the same?”

“Me?” Of course he couldn’t stay impassive in front of such atrocities, but Dimitri and him were cut from different cloth, and thus, had different weapons they could fight with. “I don’t know what I would have done, honestly, I’ve never been in this situation before; but judging by your tale, I doubt I would have started a fight with so many people that were more than likely to send me to the ER, along with those women you saved. No, perhaps I would have talked my way around, and called for reinforcement behind their back-”

“But you wouldn’t have stayed passive.”

No matter how frightened he might have been, this was certainly. His heart would have acted before his mind could have guessed the danger of the situation. “No. I don’t think I ever could.”

Something swollen in his chest when he saw how Dimitri smiled back at him.

“So,” They’ve reached the Almyra’s gate, Claude could see his mother greeting new people and recognized Sylvain and Glenn having a drink in the terrasse. “Is he going to follow you around like a lost puppy all summer?”

They both looked back at Dedue, who had indeed followed them but from a comfortable distance. The scars on his face made him look unfriendly, and the absence of any kind of emotion didn’t help. 

Dimitri sighed, “I hope not. But he’s got very little to do. He’s really a kind person, so I don’t mind, but…”

“Ah, long gone is the time when you and I were an inseparable pair.” Claude said with a smile on his face, but that for some reason couldn’t reach his eyes despite his tries. There had also been a hint of nostalgia and sadness in his tone, that got into his voice without him trying. He let out a long sigh himself and stared at the beach from the Almyra entrance. So many things have changed within the years...The scenery, the people he met, his own hands had grown so much into the shape of adult’s ones. Even Dimitri had changed, but what of them then? Did their bond suffer from any of these changes? 

“We’ll be inseparable as long as we wish to be.” Dimitri clasped their hands together to get Claude out of his sinistre thoughts, a habit he’d taken from his father. “Years and distance had no impact on our friendship before, I see no reason for us not to continue this way.”

Their eyes locked, Dimitri’s reminded him of the sky, endless above their head.

At night, Claude went to sleep with dreams of their childhood, of an endless nap they took on the hammock after a day spent at the beach, and Dimitri smelt of sand, and of the sea.

#### 3 - Black Akira

He wouldn’t lie, it had been easier to warm up to Edelgard than it currently was to Dedue, despite Claude's best efforts. His mother was a real blessing in the kitchen, and Dimitri told him she taught most of her recipes to her son - the Almyra could use some of them, their restaurant was not the best in town and everyone knew it. But the language barrier, along with something else perhaps, were forces Claude couldn’t fight against. Dedue remained a mystery for a couple of years, until he mastered their language and came to terms with what Claude and Dimitri had and couldn’t be shared. 

Due to financial difficulties Claude had to work part time with his mother at the front desk. When he pointed out the ‘financial difficulties’ excuse had been running for a couple of years, Tiana just hit his head with the side of her hand. Perhaps they need to change their accounting team?

All in all, Claude couldn’t spend as much time with Dimitri and the rest of their group as he would want to. It didn’t help that, a week after they arrived, Lambert bought his son a gift for his excellent grades.

A black motorcycle.

“Can I be frankly honest?” Claude sat on a box full of old books in the garage, his eyes on the brand new engine, “I think I hate you.”

Dimitri rolled his eyes. “Really? What a shame. I thought I could take you out on my first ride.”

“Who hates who? Me? I have no enemy.” Claude jumped on his feet to the back seat, only to get up immediately when Dimitri mentioned where the helmets were - presently, under his butts.

It was, ultimately, a bad idea. If Dimitri had taken some driving lessons back in the capital, he had nowhere the confidence or experience to take a friend with him, and was borderline too young to drive anyway. But their minds were free as any teenagers’ could be, and they ignored the rules, ignored the danger and Dimitri drove him to a cliff where they could see the beach and the other cities around. They had brought some Capri Sun along. They drank their orange juice with the black engine still purring behind them, their eyes facing the sea.

“Did you show Felix? Sylvain?”

“Felix was there when they delivered it. But my first ride was always going to be for you.”

Claude smiled at that. He never doubted it in a way but nevertheless, to have it voiced by Dimitri himself made him impossibly happy.

It was not like he was jealous of Dimitris’s friends. Claude barely remembered the time they spent as neighbours. All his memories of that time were foggy, and except for the night he understood Dimitri was not coming back the rest was a blur of yellow and blue and white, of the sand, the sea, Isabella’s dress, the one she wore when they found her immobile in the rocking chair facing the shore. The only thing that remained was their bond, invisible but strong, and Claude would never forget the happiness that filled his heart the year they reunited again on the beach, the year he first met with Edelgard and Dimitri cried his name and ran to him with his arms spread like wings.

This was _them_. They shared something unique, and Claude had stopped long ago to wonder what his days would look like if Dimitri had stayed in Derdriu instead of going to the capital.

“That’s some really quality shit your father got you this time.” He had asked Yuri about how worth it was, and if he knew the Blaiddyd were rich, he never supposed one could spend so much money for a teen’s gift. “You must have done terrific this year. Not that I doubted it.” He added, already anticipating Dimitri’s come back.

Dimitri smiled, figuring what he just did, but then his eyes unfocused on something Claude couldn’t see, something far ahead that was only visible for Dimitri. He laid on his back, his arm quickly covered his sight from the blazing sun. “You could say that.” His eyes were lost in the sky, on the rare passing clouds, gone too quickly with the wind. It hadn’t rained once since the beginning of June. “Father says I could go wherever I want for college, even at the University he went. Where he met...my birth mother.”

It was way too early to think about college, at least on Claude’s part. Did Dimitri already have an idea of what his future would hold? How could he possibly know already? They were so young! They were still boys, weren’t they? Boys with men’s hands, but hearts still too soft.

After a while Claude laid next to him, the opposite arm in front of his eyes, the other hand a breath away from taking Dimitri’s if he ever needed the comfort. “Have you thought about it yet?”

Dimitri replied after a while. “No, I haven’t.” But even without facing him, Claude knew it was a lie.

Lambert went to college overseas. He met Isabella during the entrance ceremony, and they had never been apart until the day she died.

  
  


#### 4 - Where we go and where we come from.

A couple of days before his birthday Claude found Hilda in the library, and the sight was terrifying enough to make him droop the dozen books he came to turn back that day. Hopefully she was apparently taking a nap and not studying, which would have been utterly out of character for her - especially in the middle of summer when it was so sunny outside - but in the crowd, Claude caught sight of one of Hilda’s friends, which certainly explain how the miracle that her presence in such a scholar place could occur in the first place. He smiled at Marianne as she, hopelessly, shook Hilda’s shoulder softly, but failed to accomplish her task. Hilda drooled on the cover of a maths book and Claude didn’t have enough evil in him to wake her up.

_‘Can u Blieve they gona make me work at the hotel if I don graduate??????’_ she texted him later.

It seemed the subject of their future was on everyone’s lips, and forced Claude to have this little introspection himself.

He hadn’t thought about what he wanted to do for a living. His father never asked him, and he was glad he didn’t, because he certainly didn’t picture him taking over the Almyra, no matter how he loved the place. It felt too much like a home to work here, his part time job during the weekends taught him such. But it didn’t tell him what his heart wanted in the end.

“You should start with your strong points.” He ran into Yuri on his way to Garreg Market. Of course, his friend had stolen an apple from a stall. “And don’t tell me it’s all you’ve got.”

Claude sent him an unamused look before his eyes fell on the apple. “Smuggler suits you well.”

“You don’t say. I’m opening a business with an acquaintance from the orphanage. What?” He added when he saw how unimpressed Claude was, “He’s too softhearted for business. Gonna get eaten by clients and all. I’ll only support him.”

“And what exactly are you gonna sell?”

“Surfboards.”

“Surfboards?”

“Among other things, like plastic buckets and shovels to make sandcastles, balloons and tourist traps. A real nightmare for parents with young kids.”

Claude turned his face away to hide his laugh, or so he pretended - it was, rather, the warm smile that came later he chose to conceal. Yuri had never had a real childhood, and it made sense in a way that he, all of the people, would work in a place where young children would buy what would build precious memories of happy times with the rest of their families.

“Wait. Aren’t you a bit young to work already?” Claude realized only now.

“We told the guy we were twenty one. The worst is that I think he bought it.”

To that, Claude couldn’t help but laugh. As he came back home with fishes from Eisner’s shop and the vegetables that came along, the smile that Yuri gave him accompanied him until he dropped the bags to the kitchen and went straight to his room. He fell on his bed, his eyes on the luminescent stars that decorated his ceiling and that were to be hidden until the night came, thinking about what Yuri said to him before they parted.

_‘Smart as you are, they are a billion things you could do.’_

Perhaps. Perhaps. But it definitely didn’t help him choose. He liked Science. He liked History - he loved it, even. He was a genius in chemistry, Maths and Physics were no problem for him, Literature was perhaps not his best, and their foreign languages teacher was a real catastrophe, but otherwise…

What Yuri said was true; he could do pretty much whatever he wanted if he kept it up like this.

“Most universities ask for your grades from high school and solid motivation.” Dimitri told him. They were having a lemonade with Felix while Sylvain, Glenn and Holst were having beers on a table nearby _‘like adults_ ’ - or so they told them. “If you're still unsure about the path you want to take, you should perhaps start looking around, depending on how far you’re reading to go to pursue your study.”

“How far? Do you mean like, leaving Derdriu?” Most of the bigger Universities were in the capital after all. Which meant he could spend more time with Dimitri that way - that was if he did not follow his father’s path and stayed in Fodlan, of course.

Somehow the thought of Dimitri leaving him behind haunted him. It brought back forgotten memories of a broken boy with a dragon plush, and his friends leaving without turning back.

“You never thought of moving from here?”

As surprising as it sounded no, Claude never thought of a life outside Derdriu - outside the Almyra. Of course, he never considered Derdriu to be the place he would spend all his life, but let’s just say the idea of leaving hadn’t crossed his mind yet.

“If I were you, I’ll leave. As soon as I can.” Hilda said, resigned. “I’m not sure I could do the same. But as soon as I get the money...I’ll open my own boutique and sell my jewels.”

“You’re still fixated on that?” Behind the tease, Claude couldn’t say he didn’t envy her at times. She seemed so determined, and as carefree and sloth as she was Hilda had a dream, something he hadn’t.

“Oh no, my little rose.” Holst came behind her and clasped her shoulders gently. “You’re not leaving your big bro’ behind.”

“Fine. Then come with me ‘cause I’m not waiting for your permission.”

“You’ve got to admit your sis’s got talent. You made those, right?” Sylvain leaned a bit too close and held the necklace she was wearing, which earned him a punch in the face by Hilda’s devoted guardian. “Oi. What was that for?”

“You know what it was for.” Felix said, tiredly. “I wish Ingrid was there.”

The group continued in their antics, Dimitri lively participating in what for Claude remained a foreign territory. There were still times like today when the closeness the ones from the capital shared would resurface, and it’s not like Claude resent them for it, on the contrary. He always felt more or less left out in those moments, and as he was gazing elsewhere, to the sea, the beach, to his father serving customers at the counter, his eyes halted on Dedue, sitting with them but at the other end of the table.

They exchanged a silent nod after staring at each other for a while. Claude walked the group back to the house when the sun came down. Since Dedue was resting in Dimitri’s room now, they had less opportunity for sleepovers.

“It’s going to be lonely not to have El for my birthday party.” He said at the door. “Who are we going to let win this time, hn?”

“Claude. I think it’s time we come to terms with this. We never let her win, we just _can’t_. She’s stronger in every single game I can think of.”

They both laughed as Dedue walked behind them and knocked on his mother’s room - Patricia put a small bed where they kept Isabella’s souvenir and the photo albums. From the corner of his eyes, Claude witnessed how Dimitri looked down as soon as his eyes met with the door. None of them said a word while the two of them spoke in Duscurien, and then, after looking back at them Dedue went inside the room with his mother, deciding he didn’t want to bother them as long as Claude was staying - or at least, that’s what Claude concluded.

“It does sound a bit like Almyrian, when you think of it.” Claude told mostly to himself.

“I’ve never actually heard you speak any of it.” Dimitri remarked. “I remember I heard your father once or twice, and it was only after he had a drink too many with my own father so I guess it must have been mostly bad words and silly jokes.”

And now was as best as any moment for Claude to realize he had never had the curiosity to learn how to speak Almyrian. Worse, as he got back to the Hotel that bore the name of half his heritage, he realized how much the topic was taboo. The name was all over it, but his father never spoke about it - Claude received some letters from time to time, from people he couldn’t remember the name of, and he knew he had dozen of uncles and aunts and cousins across the sea but as long as his father never spoke their names, they weren’t real. They were just pieces of papers, and the language was just a couple of bad words. Claude even wore his mother’s name!

Why didn’t it bother him before? Was it because his father suppressed his heritage as strongly as he could so that they could get integrated better? Well, too bad, but Claude’s skin wouldn’t get whiter even if he prayed for it. Kids at school had made fun of him for years, for something he could do nothing about, and which he had been deprived of for a reason he ignored.

Eyes set on the shining star above his bed, the day before he turned sixteen Claude Von Riegan made an important discovery. Before knowing where he wanted to go, he needed to find out where he came from.

The next day, he bought his first Almyrian book.

#### 5 - Sunburn

When Claude came back from the library, a surprise was waiting for him.

“Tada!” Edelgard made it, with a light pink summer dress that covered her ankles. Her hair was back to their original colour. “It was not permanent bleach, mind you, mother would have killed me.”

She would be here for a couple of weeks before coming back to the capital. As soon as she was settled, they all ran to the beach. She was in the water before Claude had time to set their sunshades. 

“El! Come back here! Good heavens! I’m sure she forgot to put on some sunscreen.” Dimitri was about to run after her when Claude held him still.

“You forgot about something too, didn’t you? Stay here.” Claude dragged him under the sunshade with him and hit the tip of his nose with a forefinger full on sunscreen. “You first.”

Dimitri could only sigh, resigned. He let Claude draw whiskers on his cheeks before he spread the cream on his entire face, all the while giggling.

“Get on your stomach now.”

“That’s some sign of trust, leaving someone putting sunscreen on your back without a third party watching over.” Sylvain and Felix joined them and put their towel next to Dimitri’s. “Who knows what nasty stuff Claude might draw on this pristine back of yours?”

“See, Sylvain, this is the reason I’ll never let you put sunscreen on me.” Felix said.

“Oh, my heart, it’s bleeding.” Sylvain acted, his hand on his chest.

“You actually need to have a heart for that.”

“Touché.” Claude retorted with an easy wink. He knew Sylvain was the last person to get mad for a simple joke, even if they weren’t what he would call good friends. But this seemed to change with time, as he noticed Sylvain spent more and more time with Felix instead of Glenn, for a reason Claude couldn’t pinpoint yet. Glenn was turning twenty and had other priorities, he had his own car and worked, he stayed less longer than he used to, to Felix’s despair - even if he tried to hide it, Felix wore most of his emotion close to his heart.

What was important at the moment was the white cream Claude got on his hands that was to spread on Dimitri’s all too white back. As usual he studied the skin for nevus, a bad habit perhaps, one he tried to conceal as well not to alarm his childhood friend that yes, he did some research about his late mom disease and yes, he knew the signs and how he was at risk. If Claude didn’t see anything but the usual scatter black spot from which he imagined some constellations, as if they were bright stars in the night sky, when his fingers finally applied the sunscreen the sensation was different, new, and _dense_.

It took him some time to realize what it was. It was Dimitri, his back, more particularly the muscles under his touch. They hadn’t just grown up, his chest and shoulders expanded as well and before today Claude never noticed how large Dimitri had become. His two palms on his shoulder blades weren’t enough to cover his envergure, and when did he get such wild trapezius? Claude wouldn’t say he wasn't lucky as well, archery forged his body well, especially his arms, chest and back, but nothing like Dimitri.

Could he be going to the gym and never told him?

After a minute of silent contemplation which had oddly not been interrupted either by Dimitri, who waited for Claude’s work patiently his face resting on his crossed arms, his eyes closed, or by Felix who pretended not to see the rather awkward scene in front of him and prefered buring Sylvain’s shoes under the sand, Claude got back to his senses. He rubbed his hands and started with the neck, then the shoulders and came back in the middle, and with only half of it done he was already lacking sunscreen. “You’re definitely going to the gym.” he mocked his friend.

Dimitri turned his head to him and opened an eye. “What if I am?” He said with a smile.

“That’s not a question.” Claude took the tube and made the sunscreen fall on his spine. The sudden contact made Dimitri arched his back. “Yeah, easy there!”

“Sorry, the sudden cold startled me.”

“It’s okay. Relax.”

For some reason from now on Claude reproduced the mouvements his mother taught him while she was massaging some of their clients at the spa, and which he remembered quite well out of curiosity, never thinking he would one day exercise on his best friend. Dimitri never seemed to mind if the process took more than it was necessary, judging by the couple of barely audible groans at the back of his throat the crashing of the waves couldn’t cover. The whole process turned itself to be quite enjoyable and Claude had no idea of how long he could have kept on like this if he hadn’t been taken out of this trance by drops of cold water sent at his face - and Dimitri’s back, by the same occasion.

“Are you done?” Edelgard was standing in front of them, wet from head to toes; the wind blew sand that stuck on her calves and the fresh scent of salty water their way.

He didn’t know how long it took, but certainly a bit more than what it felt. “Gimme a minute.” He heard Felix say behind him, which had now almost finished to bury Sylvain himself in the sand left for his face, and Claude had to blink: a second before Sylvain hadn’t even been here.

Under his weight he felt something moving; Dimitri was getting up, his hands on his tower for leverage and Claude once more was stunned by the sight of his back, of his prominent muscles before his brain reminded him that he should do the same if he didn’t want to end on his butt.

By chance, the disturbing thoughts only lasted a second, and the next Claude was on his feet - they both were, and Edelgard was already running back to the beach, soon followed by Felix when Sylvain emerged from his prison of sand and chased him around.

Hilda and all his friends were to join them in an hour or two, and then the summer tribu was to enjoy dinner cooked by Dedue’s mother and some by Tiana herself - the cake, of course, and his father always managed to get his hands on some biscuit they did in Almyra and that couldn’t be found here. It was nothing but the beginning of a perfect day.

When Claude stared at his side it was only to find Dimitri staring back. His cheeks were a bit rosy from the heat. He had a couple of freckles already that he didn’t have the day he arrived. Claude unconsciously counted them too.

“Isn’t your hair a bit longer?” Dimitri asked out of the blue.

By reflex, Claude caught the end of his hair, tickling with his chin in front of his face. “Yeah, perhaps. I forgot to cut them.”

“Well, it suits you. Better than me anyway.”

Claude let out a snort, “That’s hardly a compliment Dimitri. Oh, now that I think of it, we should totally look at old pictures so we can judge all your haircuts, and decide which one was the worst.”

“Do we really have to do that each year?” Dimitri whined, but in the end it was just for show. The photo album was his mother’s legacy. Dimitri would never forget about it, not in a billion years.

“I’m afraid my mother would tie us to our chair if we forget about it.”

They both laughed quietly. In front of them, Sylvain was terrorizing every kid with his body covered in sand - or it might have been Felix shouting his lungs out - while Edelgard was playing some cheap racket game with her mother, something they probably bought at Yuri’s shop now that Claude thought about it.

“We should go.”

For some reason, Dimitri’s voice sounded lower than it usually was. For some reason, Claude would have prefered to stay here with DImitri, alone, a bit more.

“Yeah.” He said instead. They walked slowly to the shore, tiptoes flirting with the incoming waves, until their eyes met, in a daring way and in an instant it was over - they ran to the sea, racing, to see who would jump in the water first.

This day was the beginning of a lot of things.

#### 6 - Insight

Claude received many gifts for his birthdays, even if he kept saying he didn’t need anything more than his friends’ presence and family love, but Yuri’s insight might have been, even to this day, his most precious treasure.

_“Pretty eyes, hn?”_

It had been a year, but in the darkness of the room, as his mother brought him the cake with trick candles and tons of smarties and the spark reflected into Dimitri’s blue eyes, Claude felt something in his chest, as if someone punched him from the inside, and he heard the words again, and again. Perhaps the champagne they just had, and which he tasted for the first time, didn’t actually help, not at all but yes, he wanted to say, to reply to Yuri a year late, Dimitri had pretty eyes, and he had been staring at them all his life, so why the heck did he only realize it now?

As soon as the presents were unwrapped the adults let the youngs be, and Sylvain proposed they occupied the beach for a change; they started a fire, Yuri brought his guitar and Dorothea sang along with Claude, while Linhardt repeated again he was too lazy to look for his synthé, even if he lived literally five minutes away from here.

They were a dozen at most. Claude’s head was spinning.

“You okay?” Dimitri sat next to him, his hand on his own leg, at loss for a better place to rest - a hand that would have probably been resting on Claude’s back if they hadn’t had so many people around them, and Claude was glad Dimitri had the delicacy to hide some of their usual mark of affection in front of people who wouldn’t understand them. 

Claude looked up.

_“Pretty eyes, hn?”_

And suddenly Dimitri’s lips were so close and yet too far.

Yuri and Dorothea sang pop love songs and all of Nirvana’s classics before Sylvain called it a night when Claude fell asleep on Dimitri’s shoulder.

#### 7 - Lorenz

August was showing up by the end of the week, which meant Claude was officially on his last days of hard labour. Once more Bilal signed him to the vacation camp held by Catherine and Shamir with the rest of the boys - Edelgard was to come back to the capital the following week so she declined the invitation, and declared she was to enjoy the end of her time here with Dorothea and Ferdinand. 

“Oi, hot head.” His mother hit him softly on the top of his head to get his attention. “Today the new guy will come to see how you work. So be nice with him, okay?”

Claude rolled his eyes. “Okay.” He was tired of doing what his parents were incapable of.

The Gloucester were not what the Von Riegan could call unfriendly, but as Bilal experienced love at first sight when he first saw Tiana, the same could be said for their accounting, but on the very opposite spectrum. As life always found a way to surprise them, the Gloucetser were the proof that it was possible to hate someone at first sight, even before this person actually had the time to open their mouth - and then, it got only worse. Contrasting with the Goneril who they liked very much, Tiana never held the Gloucester in her heart and never invited them over, but as they found themselves short of hands for the end of the summer, the unexpected help from their son came like a benediction, and if it meant Claude could have a month to himself and to spent with his friends, then perhaps he could make an effort, and not hating the guy for a single day. Or at least, he’d try.

But Lorenz was making it more difficult than it needed to be.

“Are you certain this is how you want me to welcome customers?” Among other cutting remarks, punctuated their tour of the Almyra and by the end of the morning Claude was mentally exhausted. It was hard to play nice, but the worst was probably that Lorenz never realized he was being a pain, or even rude.

Yet, Claude couldn’t help but laugh when the guy proposed they should offer a rose to every woman booking a room, which had the benefit of cutting their meeting short, for it seemed that if Lorenz was fond of pointing out everything that displeased him, he was uninclined to receive any negative feedback himself.

“He’s insufferable.” He pestered to Yuri. The boys were enjoying an ice cream during Yuri’s pose - it seemed that his worries about Ashe were unfounded in the end, his childhood friend was the best trader he had had the chance to witness so far, making people buy twice what they came to find in first place. They sat in front of the beach, between surfboards and bikinis. “I don’t remember him to have been such an ass at school.”

“You’ve known him for that long?” Yuri inquired.

“Kind of. Never personally. His parents are way too wealthy to live in the area, so I guess he moved just before middle school. Or went to a private school.”

“You come from very different worlds, that’s to say.”

“But it is the same for Dimitri,” Claude made him remark, “So it’s not just a question of wealth. Whatever your ressource, you can still choose to be a good person at heart, or a jackass - look at you, for example-”

This cost him a soft punch on the shoulder, and some of Yuri’s ice cream fell on the sand. “You owe me one.” he said.

“ _Lorenz_ owes you one.” Claude rectified. It was not the first time Lorenz’s existence or mentions alone annoyed him, and it would unfortunately not be the last.

#### 8 - Bloom

After three weeks spent with them, between swimming, horse riding and playing the piano along with Claude and Dorothea - and Ferdinand, who always found a reason to stay, and ignore all the signs pointing at Edelgard wanting him gone from her sight - it was time for Edelgard to go back to the capital, along with her mother and her new cooking aid - and fatally, Dedue as well. Her cheeks were rosy from staying too much under the blazing sun but the smile on her face had never been wilder. Alas, Edelgard had perhaps even more ambition than her step brother from the very beginning, and she was already preparing for entrance exams on some of the most prestigious international colleges. Patricia couldn’t have been prouder, and sometimes Claude wondered what Dimitri thought of it, or if his father showed the same interest in his future, and of what path he should take.

“We’re not in the same class, at school,” he told him when Claude eventually asked how he lived through their silent yet palpable rivalry concerning their scholarship, “So our parents are proud to say both their children are first in their respective class. But I have to admit, and it wouldn’t surprise you, that except in some very precise domains, my sister is better than I will ever be.”

“You’re too humble with yourself.” Claude quickly countered. What should he say then? “You have other qualities that can’t be evaluated by a mere test, and where El will never be able to beat you.” 

“Oh, is that so?” Dimitri put his blackberry aside and turned to Claude, still sitting on his bed with a book in hands. “What qualities do you have in mind?”

For some reason his cheeks burned before he could think of a reply. Claude’s grip on his Almyrian’s book tightened but his mind remained blank. It’s not like he couldn’t think of anything, on the contrary; his heart was full of compliments and had yet to find anything he didn’t like about his best friend, but that’s maybe where the uneasiness came from. He looked up; pretty eyes, gentle heart, all the memories they shared, just thinking about them made the words grow, they were now too big to pass his throat.

“Claude?”

Bitten by the sharpness of his voice, Claude cleared his throat, “Humility, for example.” He just said, even if it felt like his whole body was screaming to say more, but found himself too shy to try.

No, not shy, _embarrassed_ was perhaps a better term. Embarrassed, definitely, that his thoughts were lingering more and more, and for far too long, on Dimitri’s bright blue eyes and high cheekbones, on the shape of his jaw, bemused by his own behaviour as he would stare at Dimitri’s back for a moment before risking a hand on his arm, for absolutely no reason at all but to feel his skin against his palm, just because he could, just because he wanted to.

Curled in a fetal position on his bed, Claude was a bit lost, thinking about what he truly wanted. He wasn't blind nor stupid, and Yuri’s teasing found their way under his skin way before he realized the part of truth they held. 

But even if it was not his imagination he put these thoughts aside. It would pass. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of Dimitri, and how sometimes, when they stood alongside with their other friends around, it hurt not to be able to grab his hands.

But he failed, and magnificently.

The eve of Edelgard’s departure the three of them spent the afternoon at the beach, as always, but came back earlier for her swimsuits and towels to dry properly before she could pack. They have run and laughed and played in the sand as if they were eight again, and were exhausted, thanks to the emotion and the heat combined. The sun had the worst effect on Dimitri, of course, as he had forgotten to put a cap on. As soon as they gained the house, he crawled on the hammock, which swang and almost broke. Claude chucked; Dimitri’s butt was so close to touch the floor.

“Let me bring you something to drink.” He said. Edelgard had long disappeared upstairs, shouting at some point that she needed a good shower, but which none of them heard.

That’s how Claude found himself alone when he came back to the living room, the patio door opened and the wind making the thin white curtain waved inside, Dimitri fast asleep in the hammock. There was nothing but the noise coming from the shore, and of Dimitri’s regular breathing. He had, probably without willing, put on a rather suggestive and alluring pose, Claude caught himself thinking, with an arm behind his head and the other on his belly where it was pulling on his shirt, revealing his tons abs underneath, kissed by the sun. If his eyes hadn’t been busy Claude could have ventured his gaze even downer, to Dimitri’s spread legs and short, his thick thighs and up his waist, on the line on his skin where the sun hadn’t reached, a strict demarcation between white and tanned. But his eyes hadn’t had the chance to go that low. Claude stopped at his lips, partly opened, breathing in and out slowly, so rosy and so full, and by the time he realized he wasn’t able to tear his gaze away he was short of breath. The icy glasses remained in his hand, long forgotten in his contemplation, water condensing and running to Claude’s hands, making his hold less sure than it used to be when he entered the room. His feet brought him just next to the hammock, his torso overlooking Dimitri’s body lying peacefully just under his gaze, only for him to see. He looked so relax, so comfortable; Claude wondered for a moment, if he were to lie next to him, if he’d smell like the sea, if his breath tickling on the crook of his neck would send shiver down his spine, if even the few part of their bodies that would touch would burn like the sun.

And his lips were parted, and they were so close and yet, so far.

And Claude wanted them.

Unbeknownst to him, Edelgard had finished showering, and had been standing at the end of the staircase for some time.

“Is something the matter?” She asked after a while.

Startled, Claude turned around, and one of the glass fell on the floor. Shattered glass awoke Dimitri from his slumber. His heart pounding in his chest, panic rose on Claude’s cheeks for the first time in ages, and in front of the people he trusted the most.

How long had Edelgard been here? How long had he been staring?

“Oops! Silly me.” Frozen with stupor, none of the teens had reacted to the mess Claude made, he excused himself promptly and rushed to the kitchen to clean up behind him. Edelgard joined him short after he disappeared from the crime scene with a pair of tongs

“Be careful. Don’t cut your feet.”

There was something in the way she dropped her gaze, lacking the confidence she always abhorred, that told Claude a bit about how much she had witnessed from the previous scene. Enough to feel slightly uncomfortable.

“Thanks.” He replied with a fake smile, trying to sound joyful and carefree, when he could still feel his heart hammering in his chest, the noise reaching his ears.

When they came back Dimitri hadn’t moved from the hammock, for obvious reasons - Edelgard gave him his tongs and excused herself, running back upstairs, her motives unknown to the boys - but had his glass of lemonade on the floor and almost intact. He took it and handed it to Claude. “Have some.” He said. “Since you’ve waisted yours.”

“Ah, no need, I’m not that thirsty.” A lie, his throat had rarely felt so dry. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually this clumsy.”

“Perhaps the sun hit you hard as well.” Dimitri yawned as to prove a point, what a great timing. “I’m feeling exhausted for some reason.”

Yeah, the sun, perhaps; Claude dared to look up while Dimitri was busy putting his glass back to the floor, the sun, or something approaching, he thought.

“Claude,” the boys turned around; Edelgard was back with Isabella’s old polaroid in hand. “Get in the hammock.”

“What? Are you insane?” Heat rose to his cheeks again. “Dimitri barely fit in already!”

“I knew you had no guts.” She mocked him. Which would have usually worked, but today was a different story. Today Claude was utterly flustered and feared a secret his heart just revealed to himself might be discovered, from the last persons he wanted to be aware of it. 

And what secret, exactly? It’s not like he put a word on it already.

“Why? I’m sure it can handle both of us.” A voice said behind his back, and the second after Claude felt a hand, warm, firm, around his wrist, jacking him into Dimitri’s embrace.

“Oi!” He wanted to fight but his body froze as soon as their chests collided. It was like all his strength and resolved vanished from his body with a sigh; despite his common sense Claude breathed in, the scent of Dimitri, of the crook of his neck, invaded him, the arm he pulled around his waist, bringing him closer was warm and welcome, familiar, too much perhaps, like an extension of his own self. In his arms, Claude relaxed. It was them, just them, and their usual antics, and nothing had changed.

He took another breath before turning his head where he thought Edelgard should stand, the polaroid in hand - she took a picture the moment he stared her way. She shook it a couple of times before taking a look. She smiled. Claude didn’t like that.

“Hey. Let me-”

As he tried to get out of Dimitri’s embrace something cracked, and the hammock finally broke. Both boys found themselves on the floor, their groans of pain hushed by Edelgard’s hysterical laughs - soon joined by Dimitri’s and then his own. Of course, his father was less pleased with this findings, as it had been a fond memento of their old life when Isabella was still alive - but that was something Claude couldn’t understand, not at that time. Later, years later, when he’d look back at all the pictures of Dimitri and him through the years in the exact same hammock he broke, the feeling would be different.

Claude stayed until late in the evening. When he had to leave, eventually, Edelgard accompanied him to the patio door.

“Actually, can I walk you back to the Almyra?” She proposed, to his surprise and which elected an immediate state of fear and suspicion. Why would she do that? Only Dimitri did…

“I have something I’d like to talk about with you.”

Claude smiled, pretending not to feel threatened by her firm tone. “Sure.” But the joyness he tried to but in his grin barely reached his voice.

“You don’t mind it either, if it’s just the two of us?” She turned to her step brother. Dimitri shook his head, giving his benediction, and for a moment Claude wondered what he had done to deserve such unwanted attention. “After all, walking along the beach at night shouldn’t be reserved to the two of you only, should it?”

“My, if I had known you were jealous of such a simple act, I would have requested for your presence sooner.” Claude tried to mock her to hide his own uneasiness, and as expected, apart from making Dimitri laugh in the distance, it had little effect on Edelgard’s composure, who saw right through him from the very beginning.

The first silent steps they took on the beach echoed in his head, along with all worries and anticipation. Was she going to address the scene she witnessed earlier? What exactly did she see? What was there to see to begin with?

He couldn’t help but notice how they took a different path; Edelgard didn’t stop in front of the shore where ashes of someone she never knew were spread in the wind, lost in the waves.

“Dorothea told me the orchestra received a favourable reply to their inquiry. They will have to perform during one of the concerts given at the beach.” Edelgard spoke. Her voice, softer than he expected, took him out of his contemplation, of thoughts about Dimitri again. “She wants to sing the old song I gave you, you know, the partition.”

“9th of March?” Claude asks.

“Yeah, that one, among others. We practiced together, I made some arrangements. I gave them to her.”

“And you’re telling me because…?”

“She wants to play with you.” Edelgard said, as if it was so obvious. But to be honest Claude was not thrilled at the idea; he hadn’t practiced in a while, and if Edelgard made the arrangement, his skill might not be suffisant to do the piece any justice. “She said it was as good as any occasion to get you back into music.”

“If that’s so, I’m afraid i’ll have to decline.” He said with a smile, nonetheless, with a heart at peace. If the topic at hand wasn’t something he was truly comfortable with - he would have rather not deceive a friend - it was very much more welcomed than to speak about what on earth happened to him to freeze in front of Dimitri’s sleeping form. “When is the concert due?”

“Two weeks.” She answered.

“And you expect me to master your arrangements this quickly, when I haven’t played in, what, years?”

“You’re better than what you let people know. I’ve always noticed.” They reached the Almyra, Lambert was having a drink with Bilal and Rodrigue. Felix, Glenn, Sylvain and Holst were playing babyfoot inside. “I’ve always wondered why you keep it back, to be honest. It’s like you’re not trying to be the best of you.”

“Everyone is not like you.” And he meant her and Dimitri. “I don’t see the point in working to exhaustion if I don’t have to. I’m just doing whatever I need to get to my goals. But you made it sound like I’m slacking off; that’s not true!”

“I know. I am not saying you’re a dunce.” Claude frowned, he felt hurt by her remark and she noticed, taking his wrist, “Claude, it’s not what I said. But you could be excellent if only you wanted to, and it’s nothing but frustrating to see you _not_ trying.”

“El! My sweetheart,” Lambert had somehow joined them in the heat of their argument. “Aren’t you preparing for tomorrow?”

“I’m ready. I was just walking Claude back.”

“Oh, how original. Where is Dimitri?” Tiana asked, a hand on her hip, a dirty rag in the other.

“He stayed behind.” Claude let out a sigh when Edelgard replied on the spot, for some reason it seemed anyone mentioning Dimitri today would end up with him blushing. “It’s not written on rocks that he’s the only one to get the chance to see the Almyra at night. What a beautiful view you have from here.” And she was right, the stars reflected on the water a couple of metres away only from the entrance. Claude’s eyes wandered to the pier where he often spent time with Dimi- what was wrong with him? Couldn’t he spare a thought at something that wasn’t his blond head?

“You can stay here as much as you’d like. If your father agrees to, of course.” Tiana told Edelgard, before going back inside, shouting, “Boys! You’re too noisy! Holst, tell them to hush, customers might want to rest.”

“So my dear, what do you want to do?”

Edelgard should have been watching over her father, at least that’s what normal people would have done. Instead, her eyes were set on Claude, as if she had something she wanted to share, but couldn’t decide if she must.

“No, let’s go back. I’m exhausted, and I told mother I wasn’t going to be long.” Her eyes hadn’t moved from Claude’s face. He held his breath the all time she waited for her father to be ready. Rodrigue remained behind with his boys and Bilal, and she only nodded as she passed by Claude, begging her goodbyes.

He wouldn’t see her in over a year. He was glad about that knowledge, perhaps for an entire night. At least, next time they would face each other, this little moment of madness would be long forgotten, and Claude would be able to stare at her eyes without feeling his soul being eaten inside out.

But the sole star of his ceiling stared down at him with the same questioning gaze, and that’s when Claude figured out the problem didn’t come from the others; it was him, and him alone, whose stare had changed and nothing else. Dimitri hadn’t changed overnight, nor had Edelgard, or his room. He rolled on the side to avoid the attention, only to realize it was in vain. How could he escape his own thoughts? How could he close his eyes and not imagine Dimitri’s, and how disappointed in him he would be if he ever found out about what impure thoughts ran in his head, that one time his eyes were closed, and his lips, plumped and tempting, promised to him?

That night, he didn’t. The other nights had the same sentences.

Claude would remember this night to be the first when he developed feelings for his best friend, and to be frank, from the day he had turned sixteen it never really went away.

#### 9 - Photo albums

The first time Isabella had a photo album in hand was during primary school, after a class trip that brought them to the mountains where they discovered plants and animals she had never seen before. Her teacher took a couple of pictures to immortalize what was, for most kids at this time, their first real trip, their first adventure. Isabelle had been six at that time and she never forgot the feeling of the thin protecting paper between tougher ones, and the glittering pen they used to illustrate the album that stayed in their class the whole year, and which they could all consult as they pleased. It became one of her favourite hobbies, especially while waiting for her mother to pick her up, and in truth, she could never tell how many times she had looked over the pictures of her friends, and of the different plants, long after they had been picked up and put in a vase, long after they withered and died. But in the pictures, they were still in bloom, and they always would be. The picture made them immortal.

When she was older, after her grandfather died Isabelle begged her mother to show them pictures of the past; but alas, as she would learn within the years technology evolved with time, and the black and white, saturated, sepia pictures of her grandfather’s youth made him look rigid, static, impossibly still and lifeless, and she who had only known him with few white hair and winckles had great difficulty to recognize the man who often told her ghost stories in the man in the picture her mother was holding. 

Disappointed that her grandfather couldn’t recreate the miracle of eternity she had witnessed with plants, Isabelle only bought her first photo album the day she was given a Polaroid 1000 on the day she turned twenty.

That day she took countless of pictures, as many as she could before she ran out of films, and if at first she collected all the captured memories on the wall of her room, she soon found that they had little place between her pop culture and ballet posters, and that they aged poorly - the film turned yellowish in only a matter of months, and soon Isabella understood that, to cherish something, sometimes she would have to hide it from the world, or in this case, inside an album. Of course, she could see them as often she wanted, but it wouldn’t be the same - and it was not; the photo album she bought at that time was cheap and frail, and once she put all the pictures inside she never opened it again, and the memories of this amazing party would been, indeed, eternally forgotten at the bottom of a drawer.

Lambert bought her one for their first year. She had, of course, told him about her misadventures, since it was difficult to hide her love of photographs. The one Lambert chose was almost perfect in size and materials, and it reminded her of the one in her childhood classroom. With time, Isabella filled it with joys, with moments she wished to last forever, some exceptional and some not - Isabella had always believed there was more beauty in a peaceful routine than in anything exceptional. Every day's happiness was the real miracle of matrimony, and that only could bring long term blissfulness.

When they moved to Derdriu Isabella found her old photo album, in that drawer in her room, untouched for years. Suddenly, as her gaze stopped on each picture, on each face, she was reviving the party again, almost ten years later. By the end of the album her eyes were wet with dawning tears, but which never were big enough to run down her cheeks. The emotions she felt were mixed, of joy and surprise, but also of shame to have forgotten about it and her friends, and how in a time that seemed not so far away, she had been happier than she remembered, even without Lambert at her side - but she was not the same person anymore. The pictures had immortalized her twenty year old self, and like the flowers, like her grandfather, she was lost already, dead, replaced by the person she was today. These pictures were nothing but Memento Mori for her present self, but she found in them an important place in her heart, and a dreadful utility.

Then she had Dimitri, and again she changed, as any new mother did when they had their first born, and the need to leave a trace behind, to fix time at a certain moment of her son’s growth was almost vital. She took hundreds of pictures a day, despite Lambert’s warning, for films were expensive at that time - they still were, but new cameras and a good printer did the trick now.

“A new one?” Lambert curled an arm around her waist as soon as he reached the door. His wife had bought yet another photo album - thick, in leather with some golden glitter on the cover.

“It’s not for me.” She said, enigmatically. “It’s for the boys.”

Dimitri and Claude were growing fast, too fast for her liking; and by the time they would blink, they would have forgotten all about those peaceful times they spent together - who could tell what the future would hold for them? Would they even stay in Derdriu? Would they still be friends when they hit their teenages years? No one could know, and life was unpredictable and sometimes cruel; Isabella wished for nothing but for it to be kind to her boy, and smooth him with the underlying joy of being loved by many, and never more than by herself.

But as she feared, life was cruel.

“How much I wish we could go back to that time.” Isabelle caressed the glazed paper with her fragile hand. She closed the album and handed it to Tiana. “I don’t even feel any joy looking at those. All I see, when I look at their faces, is all the pictures I’ll never be able to take. Keep it. Keep it for me.”

During her last week Tiana had been her salvation. For some reason, perhaps the medications that were too strong, or the disease too advanced, Isabella was obsessed by the idea of leaving a sort of heritage behind, something for Dimitri to remember her and she could think and talk about nothing but photo albums. Perhaps it was because she wanted to be like that plant, the one of her six years old, she wanted to be young and pretty, and healthy, forever.

She didn’t want to wither.

Lulled by the waves, she wondered, before she closed her eyes forever, if the sea would always be here.

“You were two here, I think.” Tiana told Claude. He was five at that time. Dimitri had been gone for a couple of months and he missed him horribly. “I still have that hat I think.”

“But it’s too small for me!”

“Yes, of course, you’re a big boy now!”

Sometimes Lambert would call them to take a look at the house and make sure everything was okay. They had a double of the keys of course; Tiana came here more than Bilal, certainly because the place worked on her like the pictures for Isabella: going back where they had shared the happiest memories brought her friend back to life in a way. Some of the Blaiddyd’s stuffs were still here, including a couple of photo album Lambert hadn’t had the strength to bring with him - especially the one he bought her for their first years, full of pictures of the couple, was forgotten at the back of a drawer until Tiana found it again. She kept it and often cried, looking over it alone, before she had the courage to give it back to Lambert, and before Lambert felt good enough to take it back. It wasn’t until a couple of years after he met Patricia.

They kept the ritual. Less often than before, but as soon as the Blaiddyd came back, with Edelgard and Patricia, then with their other friends from the capital, they took pictures. The Von Riegan had a dozen undeveloped films from disposable cameras which they soon forgot when summers ended, but it was never the same with the boys. The day of Claude’s birthday was the day of the picture in the hammock.

“Is it okay if we aren’t dressed the same?” Claude asked, he had just turned eleven.

“I think it should do it.” Lambert came back from upstairs with a Polaroid in hand. He looked at Tiana, “She wouldn’t be mad at us if they aren’t.”

It sounded too much like a question not to reassure him. “After all, if you want to always have the same attire, we can take a picture of you naked. That would be less expensive.”

“What! No!” Dimitri protested.

“I don’t mind.” Claude shrugged at Dimitri’s horrified face. “We took baths together when we were little, remember?”

This was the ultimate truth, “No! I don’t!” And they would never know if Dimitri lied that day, but the topic was never brought up, and all forgot about this conversation.

Well, not exactly. The day Tiana took the photo album to put the latest picture inside after Claude’s sixteen birthday party her eyes lingered on the other pictures, when they met they particular one - Dimitri had been quite flustered by the conversation it seemed, his cheeks were a bit rosy - the memories resurfaced. Tiana smiled fondly. She loved them. She loved the picture, the album, how it captured their memories and made them accessible, always, as many times as they wanted. 

She gave the recent picture a second look; wasn’t it her Claude, blushing now? What could have happened? If only Edelgard had still been here, she could have asked her - Claude was a teen now, and there was a good chance he wouldn’t share with her all his worries and embarrassing stories, as he so often did in the past. But it was for the better, Tiana thought, he had friends now, who he could confess to if needed.

As she placed the picture next to a couple of ones they took at the beginning of summer she realized the photo album was almost finished; only a couple of pages remained, and for some reason it broke her heart.

“Should we buy another one?” She asked Bilal in the intimacy of their room.

It might have not been the best moment to ask: Bilal was reading the Almyrian newspaper, something he rarely did - when she asked a couple of weeks ago when this habit had started, he told him there were tensions within the island, and he was worried for his relatives. That’s perhaps why his response was evasive, as if he didn’t care - which was actually not very far from being right - and Tiana couldn’t understand. She stared at the ceiling for the rest of the night.

The next morning, she bought a new one.

The tradition lived on, so did Isabella.

#### 10 - Of fathers.

Thankfully with the begining of Shamir’s and Catherine’s camp Claude had the opportunity to keep his mind busy and drag his thoughts away from Dimitri, hoping it wouldn’t show too much. It’s not like he was avoiding him, not really, but perhaps he went out with Yuri and his friends more frequently, and ignored Edelgard’s or Dimitri’s invitation more often than before. When Dimitri would ask why he hadn’t been at the hotel when he came to visit and got a vague and unconvincing reply, Claude would pretend he didn’t notice the imperceptible disappointment on Dimitri’s face, never.

He thought a lot of Edelgard, and of what she told him, especially during his class with Shamir.

Claude had many talents, and sure, perhaps he hid them to people who he didn’t know enough; but archery was his specialty. Yet, even here, he had never tried to be excellent. He just went with the general flow, listened to every piece of advice Shamir gave him to make her happy, never transcending himself. Perhaps it was the right time to try out Edelgard’s advice. 

At the end of the camp, even Shamir was surprised by how much Claude progressed - and, more importantly, so was Claude. And knowing he was extraordinarily good at something because he worked harder for it gave him a satisfaction he had rarely felt before, and a new perspective. He could do a lot of things, and he’d probably succeed if he tried hard enough, no matter the path his heart chose to follow. The hardest part was perhaps to decide what to do with his life, but Claude figured he could wait another year, or ask his favourite professor for advice - it was, in any case, not anything urgent.

What got his interest first was the Almarian’s language, which he had started to study at the beginning of summer after his meeting with Dedue, but dropped because of various variables - such as the difficulty to learn a new alphabet and, well, _Dimitri_ \- but as if she were an angel sent on his path, Shamir pushed him further into his boundaries, and encouraged him to overpass the first obstacles in his learning.

“Oh, it’s true that you’re half Almyrian. I tend to forget.” She said the day she spotted him with a learning book in hand in front of the training field - he came early in a vain and childish attempt to avoid Dimitri, knowing full well they would meet later in the day. “Your father never taught you?”

“No, unfortunately. He’s quite busy with the hotel.” He added after a pause; the idea just came to his mind, and as far as he could remember the few times Claude had spent with his father alone were full of games and laughters and silent trips in the mountains. There had barely been any moment to properly sit around a table and talk about their mother tongue, and Claude doubted his father had the required capacity to teach anything - he had always been a manual. “And we never talked about it at home.”

The last part was spoken with regret and a hint of spite, something Shamir, as sharp as she was, couldn’t have missed. “Sometimes, some memories are too painful to be shared with younglings. Your father may be waiting for you to get older to understand a couple of things.”

“I’m old enough now.”

“So you think, but perhaps he does not. You should talk to him. Or to your mother about the topic. I’m from Dagda.” She told him, and Claude couldn’t help but drop his book on the sand and stare at her in awe. 

“Dagda? But...it’s on the other side of the world! Why, how, did you-”

“War.” She answered before he could formulate any question. “It took everything from me. When I realized I had nothing left to lose anymore I fled. I stayed a couple of years in Brigid and Almyra too, before I ended here. By far, Almyrian is the hardest language to master.”

Claude remained speechless until other teens arrived for their class. The trouble in his heart didn’t prevent him from outclassing the session as always. It was almost as if he could feel Shamir’s mindful gaze fixated on the back of his neck.

His last arrow hit the centre of the target. Claude decided next time, he’d ask for more details.

“Ashe told me you are on another planet recently.” Yuri told him during his lunch break - Yuri ate way too much junk food for his own good, one day his body would rebel against his diet. “Like your shots are far better than they used to be. You’re almost as good as that teacher, he says.”

“Ashe is way too kind for his own good.” Claude replied, but the smile on his face betrayed the pride he got from the praise. “I only took up someone’s advice, and try to give it all - at least at things I’m already good at, and that I like.”

“Whose advice? Dimitri?”

Yuri sounded amused - his eyes were playful, but he concealed his smile for some reasons. “No. Edelgard.”

“Oh.” And now he sounded disappointed. Claude definitely didn’t like that. “It’s true she’s kind of brilliant and obstinate.”

“Why did you think it was Dimitri's?”

He wasn’t sure why he asked. Perhaps deep inside he needed to know if Yuri had seen a few things he had missed that could have betrayed, way before he realized it, that the feelings he had for his best friends weren’t platonic anymore. As soon as the question was out of his mouth he regretted it though, and it must have shown, for Yuri smiled gently.

“Because it’s the only person I know you actually listen to.” It wasn’t a lie per see, but Claude knew there was more that Yuri kept for himself, feeling probably that it was hardly the time to tease Claude with something so trivial as the first flutters of the heart.

“Well, when someone advances a good argumentation I am not that difficult to convince.” Claude retorted.

“It’s just damn difficult to win an argument against you.” Both laughed, indeed Yuri was right; even if he wasn’t the most vehement and aggressive interlocutor - as Edelgard sometimes could be - his speech always hit the point and impressed his opponent with his wit. “Hey, perhaps that’s one of the strong points you could work on. You know, you could become a politician, or some sort of lawyer. A job where people would have to listen to you.”

Why not after all? It was just one possibility over perhaps a million. Claude just had to find his way - but first, he’d get a grip on this bloody Almyrian’s alphabet.

Of course, Yuri and Shamir weren’t the only ones who noticed his effort - his mother did too, and came into his room in the middle of August to inquire about why he was studying so much, if he wanted to leave home or if there was a girl he was trying to impress. Blushing slightly as she mentioned a possible _‘love’_ interest he tried to hide it away by raising the book he was reading to his face.

(Claude was too young and it was definitely too soon to speak of this evil and powerful word; if anything, Claude _liked_ Dimitri, but at this point of the story, he definitely didn’t love him yet.)

Tiana saw the blush before Claude was even aware of it - she was his mother after all - and also the kind of subject he had thrown himself into. “Is that Almyrian?” She said as she crossed the distance and, for the first time in ages, sat on his bed next to him.

His mother hadn’t spent more than five minutes in his room in years. When they spoke, it was always downstairs, but never there. This room was Claude’s refuge, and he found out he didn’t mind having someone to visit from time to time.

“I thought I could…” But Claude stopped there. What was he really trying to achieve here? Finding out about his origin? He should have talked to his father instead. Doing it secretly, more than anything, was almost impossible to justify.

“It’s really pretty. The language, I mean, not the book.” Tiana was looking over the cover, then browsing the pages - Claude had written in most of them. “Your father tried to teach me when we started dating, but it was too complicated. Not the same grammar, not the same alphabet, there were even some sounds I couldn’t make properly. Like this thing from the back of your throat, the, _raaaaah_.”

Claude laughed despite himself, knowing too well how terrible his mother could be in return if she ever wanted to have revenge.

“Heh. I’d like to see you try.” She challenged him, an eyebrow raised at him just to force him to respond.

“Rhah!” Claude pronounced with ease, so much his mother had no other choice but to gasp. 

“Where- How long have you been practicing?” There wasn’t any CD in this book, so how could he make the sound she could never pronounce so easily? Life wasn’t fair!

“Dad.” Claude simply said. “Sometime when I come back...late,” he chose not to tell her how late, for his own safety, “I hear him speaking to people over the computer. He’s talking in Almyrian. I...I think he never saw me, so we never talked about it, but…”

In that moment something rare happened. Before Claude could finish his sentence Tiana curled an arm around his shoulder and brought her to her side. His head nested in the crook of her neck so naturally, as if they were still used to this ancient antics - they stopped when Claude got ‘big enough’, around when he turned thirteen, but boys were always their mother’s babies. A hand came to his hair, which Tiana stroke absentmindedly, and it’s only after she’d done all this that Claude realized he had needed it, more than anything. At lost of what to do, what to think for his future, he had stubbornly thought the answer lied in the past, in his long hidden heritage, but perhaps the answer had been simpler, perhaps he should have started to look closer to what he had, and seek for his mother’s advices before fighting his own battle unprepared, alone and weaponless.

She was half his heritage, and he completely obliterated her for more than a month.

“Your father is...rather secret. He doesn’t talk much. He’s humble, and a hard worker. He’s very funny when he wants to impress people, and even if he talks very little he notices everything. He’s sensible, perhaps a bit too much. He never told me why they fled with his father so long ago. He told Lambert, who then told me.” She confessed, still caressing Claude’s hair. “Almyra is something he deeply cares about, but I have a feeling that him being stuck here made him feel miserable, and that he prefered to not talk about it, not to reopen old wounds.”

“But how can he? It’s the name of our hotel.”

“The hotel was built by your grandfather. Your father had no say in this, he was too young anyway, but if I don’t think he would have been against it at that time, his present self would probably warm his old self this was a terrible idea.”

Attentive to her every word, Claude turned in order to face her and asked a question that had been bugging him for years. “Why do I wear your name?”

“Oh,” it’s true that they never talked about it. “Well, your father didn’t exactly enter Foldan’s ground _legally_.”

That’s how Claude learned that until their wedding Bilal had lived the life of an illegal worker, and that after they got married, Tiana skilfully duped the city hall to give her husband a new identity. Using her name had appeared more convenient at the time. Things seemed to be less strict in the past.

“I do wonder at times how he felt about his homeland. He left his whole family behind at the age of ten. He was the oldest son of five children. But he so rarely speaks about them.”

They remained pensive for a couple of minutes until the man they were thinking about came up when he saw how desperately alone he was downstairs. Tiana left a kiss on her baby boy’s head before following her husband down to the kitchen, who invoked some accounting problems again, and barely spared a glance to his progeny, or the book that got his interest.

“Do you get along well with your father?” Claude asked Dimitri the next day.

The four of them - Sylvain and Felix were never too far - were enjoying the latest day of good weather at the beach for a change. While he put sunscreen on Dimitri’s back, Claude was more than happy to have something else than the softness of his skin under his palms to think about, and most naturally engaged conversation about a very tenuous topic as a decoy.

“I-”

“I hate my father.” Felix said first.

Next to them Sylvain turned around and mouthed ‘he loves him’ silently.

“And I hate you too, Sylvain.”

And now that he thought about it Felix rarely spent time with his father, since it was mostly Glenn who got his attention. Claude had no sibling, but he could guess why some resentment could reach his heart on the matter.

“You don’t love anybody anyway.” Sylvain added, getting on his knee when he decided Felix was done with his back. “Your turn now.”

“That’s not true.”

“Tell me then, who do you lo- no, that’s too difficult, tell me who you do _not_ hate. And Dimitri doesn’t count.”

“What do you mean by ‘I don’t count?’” Even from behind Claude could imagine him frowning so easily. He chuckled, but found soon enough that he too had finished to put sunscreen on his childhood friend’s back, and yet didn’t want to get his hands off of him. He did so though, as there were so many people around them and perhaps also because at some point Dimitri would notice, and Claude was definitely not ready to face him.

“Come on, everybody loves you. It’s too easy.”

“I won’t be so sure if I were you.” Dimitri replied to Sylvain’s praise, humble as ever. “I am sure there are people out that I must irk, no matter the reason.”

“Yeah, people that would find your perfection too annoying.” Felix pestered.

“People like Felix.” Claude rubbed it in.

And Felix, like stung by a bee, got on his feet at this instant. “That’s official, I hate you all.”

“No, you’re not going anywhere, grumpy cat,” Sylvain caught him by the hem of his short and shoved him on his beach towel. “Not when I’m not done with you yet.”

On their side, Claude and Dimitri watched the scene without intervening, rather amused - they shared a look, then laughed quietly to themselves. Sylvain and Felix’s friendship were definitely nowhere near theirs, but who cared in the end?

“I’d rather have a sunburn - what is it you’re drawing on my back?!” He yelled, scaring toddlers that were running to the sea.

“I can make no promise.” And Sylvain didn’t do anything to make the situation any better.

“I hope it’s not-”

“Oh, it’s a flower!” Claude exclaimed, for he had been quite certain Sylvain was more keen in drawing, let’s say, more adult’s stuff on his friends’ backs. For a surprise…

“Hn, should I believe you?” Came Felix’s reply, which was not a surprise. 

Dimitri turned around then, his shoulder bumping on Claude’s chest, “I can reassure you, it’s a flower.”

“A pansy.” Sylvain clarified.

“A pansy? Are you sure? This looks rather like a daisy.”

“Would you all shut up?!” Felix shouted again, not caring that the whole beach was staring at them - people stared at them at least for a whole minute, then life went on and people returned to reading their books or naps, and ran back to the sea. 

On the other hand Claude found himself too occupied staring at something that caught his attention to care about all that was happening around him, or to hear his friends’ quarrel.

The ‘something’ in question was the crook of Dimitri’s neck.

Claude had managed, since he found out he was attracted to Dimitri, not to stare too much when they were at the beach where there were so many people they knew, and so much skin deplayed. He was not blind, none of them were and the rest of the world certainly wasn’t as well. Dimitri stood out in the crowd with his large back and his gorgeous features overall, and his eyes were just as blue as the sky. The more he reflected on the matter the more Claude found him attractive, and so he gazed around, watching if other people were watching him like Claude would love to be allowed to. In the end, he found out that most of the people staring, girls mostly, were interested in Sylvain, and he put that on the difference of behaviour and the slight difference of age between the two friends. In any case, the finding eased his mind for a while and he used all his mental strength to look at something other than Dimitri as long as he was not wearing a shirt, or anything decent enough. But no one was perfect and a misstep was doomed to occur. Hopefully, few people were here to witness Claude’s fall if not himself, and perhaps someone else.

After Dimitri bumped his chest Claude had, automatically, looked his way - a mistake in highsight, but what could he do against archaic reflexes? - and as Dimitri was sitting and Claude knelt behind, his eyes lowered to what hit him - Dimitri’s shoulder, for example - and somehow he noticed many freckles that hadn’t been here the last time he had looked. The freckles drew a path along his back and almost gained his neck, and it was where Claude’s gaze halted for a long while.

He wondered, if he were to snuggle his face there like when they were kids, if it still smelt of the sea. He wondered if Dimitri would shudder when the tip of his nose would nuzzle him. He wondered how it tasted. If only he could run his lips on his spine and there, and lick his skin to test.

“Ahem.”

Felix cleared his throat and suddenly he and Sylvain were standing. “I really hope it was a daisy.” Claude heard him say, frowning, what was he even talking about?

But he got very little time to ponder. “Shouldn’t we go as well?” Between Dimitri’s voice, closer to his ears than he had anticipated, and the suspicious look Felix gave him, he had a lot on his mind.

Claude had almost forgotten what he had enquired earlier before Dimitri reminded him, as he walked him back to the Almyra. He walked slower than usual, perhaps afraid his voice, carried with the wind, would reach the Almyra’s terrasse, where his father was certainly having a drink with Rodrigue.

“I’m sorry I didn’t reply earlier, but talking about fathers isn’t...I mean, I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with so many people around.”

Suddenly it all came back to him - his own struggle with his father, that he felt like he didn’t know at all, and his wishes to know how other boys of his age were handling them.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed the answer to be an easy one.” Not when it was so complicated for him.

“It’s not that I mind talking about mine, but as you have heard, Felix and well, especially Sylvain, even though he doesn’t show it, don’t have their fathers in good esteem. Felix has just an unique way of showing his affection, but I fear Sylvain really resents his father for what he did to his older brother, and all the pressure he puts on him.”

“Sylvain has an older brother?” How strange, he had never heard of him.

“I’m afraid I already said too much. You should ask him, one day; perhaps he won’t tell you, not if he doesn’t feel comfortable enough-”

“I don’t absolutely wish to know,” but Claude couldn’t say it hadn’t picked his curiosity, “But it’s good to know some topics are taboo with your friends. In the end, they only come here for summer, I don’t know them that much.”

“Do you want their number? Or MSN adress? Or even Skype, now that you have a webcam.”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t feel we have that much in common anyway.” Except Dimitri. Without him, Claude wouldn’t know how to start a conversation - perhaps with Sylvain, but honestly, he had a hard time making a connexion with him, as if he was hiding his true thoughts all the time.

“If you say so.” Dimitri slowed down until he stopped, his bare feet buried in the sand and his eyes lost at the line of horizon. He did it less and less with time, but Claude would recognize this hint of sadness and nostalgia anywhere. Dimitri took a deep breath. “I don’t think father and I have what you can call a common father and son relationship, after what happened to mother.”

“And what is exactly a common father and son relationship to you?” Claude challenged him. If he’d ask him, something of the sort didn’t exist, even in books.

“I don’t know. I thought you could tell me, but with what you asked us this afternoon I got a feeling it won’t be the case.”

Claude laughed ironically behind him. He was tempted, almost, to rest his chin on Dimitri’s shoulder and gaze at the sea together, but that would be too romantic for his heart to handle at this moment - and perhaps too painful for his neck with their height differences. Had Dimitri grown during the past month? “Sorry to be a disappointment.” He simply said instead.

“Did something happen? Did you have a fight?”

“Oh, no, it’s not that. I, I just… I realized that, despite living under the same roof for a decade and a half and him being my dad, I barely know him as a _man_.” Claude said finally, and just having the words out of his chest already made the air a bit easier to breathe. “He rarely talks about anything about himself. He just...makes sure I’m good and don’t need anything, then it’s over. It’s like there’s an invisible wall between him and I, and he doesn’t want me to reach.”

“What got you realizing that?” 

Dimitri held his wrist and for a moment Claude’s heart skipped a beat. When Dimitri sat down on the cold sand though and motionned Claude to do so he tried to ignore the disappointment that materialized in his stomach by a dull ache. They watched the waves crashing on the shore, or at least, what the moon permitted them to see; the scent of salt, of sand, of the Almyra’s kitchen not so far that reminded Claude of home relaxed him, or perhaps it was Dimitri’s presence at his side, his constance in all things, that made the moment perfect, almost magic, to share what he had stored in his heart for so long.

He told him about how his meeting with Dedue made him curious about his origin and how he realized he knew nothing about them, and his thoughts eventually led him to ponder about his relationship with his own father, or rather the lack of. 

(Claude was being harsh as any teenager could be by proclaiming he had no bond with his father; because he had one, indeed, but of course it was not the ideal one he would have wanted, as it was the case with many kids and many parents, from everywhere, and at every point in time.)

“I must admit my relationship with my father isn’t quite the same as yours...I won’t call it ideal, but I think that after what happened here, we understand each other with fewer words than anyone else. I adore Patricia like my true mother, she raised me from scratch and made my father happiest than I ever saw him, but it’s not the same with her, or with El. Just by a mere look father can guess how my day has gone, if I’m happy, frustrated, deceived or proud of myself; and when he comes back from work only a glance is enough, and he would smile differently depending on my mood. We talk when things aren’t...okay, sometimes he would call me to look at pictures of mother when the two of them were younger.” For a moment Claude got distracted by Dimitri’s hand playing with the sand, and reaching dangerously close to his own. His eyes lowered for a second too long, his littlefinger bold, and extending, when Dimitri went on, breaking the small moment that only took place in Claude’s head. “There’s something invisible that binds us strongly together. We fight sometimes for trivial things, but I have little doubt of his love and affection for me, and I esteem I know enough about his own likes and dislikes, and about the sort of relationship we have. I don’t think we could have made it past the tragedy that hit us without each other.”

This last statement left Claude pensive. If he were to be honest with himself, he felt closer to his mother than he had ever felt with any other human being, and he realized with dread that Tiana was the pillar of his family; were she to disappear or leave, Claude would have no idea of how to deal with anything, and certainly not with his father - he didn’t have any idea of how he would react to such pain.

“Hey,” there was a hand on his shoulder, pushing these dark thoughts away, “Come here.”

Dimitri brought him closer to his side and let Claude rest his head on his shoulder. If he tensed at first, watching the waves and Dimitri’s warm and solid embrace made his breathing slow down, as well as his thoughts.

“Is it what has been troubling you all this time? Your father?”

All this time? What did he mean by that? “I’d rather say my heritage. What would you think if you knew Isabella was your birth mother but no one wished to talk about her with you?”

As soon as the words were out Claude regretted the indelicacy he used, comparing the absence of half of his roots to Dimitri’s dead mother, only hoping his friend wouldn’t resent him too much. Of course Dimitri never saw any malice in this, but only the distress his regrettable words conveyed. “I guess it would make me very angry, indeed. And perhaps a bit aggressive to know the truth. What are you going to do?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Thought learning the language was a good start, but it’s hella difficult…”

“Do you want to go there?”

Claude jerked his head off of Dimitri’s shoulder to stare at him, dumbfounded. Going where, to Almyra? But of course! That was so simple, so evident - except it was not, Claude was sixteen and had not enough pocket money to travel anywhere within Fodlan.

But it was an idea. A good idea to start with. A good idea to share with his father - perhaps they could even travel together one day.

“Ah, I like you better like this.” Dimitri said this with such gentleness and warmth that Claude almost lost his balance - or he would definitely have if he weren’t already sitting on the beach. “I’ve noticed that you’ve been quite absent lately. And even when you were here with us, you felt so...distant. It’s the first time I noticed this about you. It got me quite worried for a time. I even asked Edelgard about it, in case she would have noticed something I didn’t.”

Oh, no, he didn’t do that, did he? Claude was afraid his change in behaviour had little to do with his recent identity crisis, but more about the boy sitting next to him and presently giving him all the comfort he could ever dreamed of. He really wished for him not to find out yet the reason for his withdrawal that he thought was more subtle than that; perhaps he underestimated Dimitri and his sense of observation? Flashes of the day they broke the hammock came to his mind, the broken glass of lemonade, Dimitri’s lips, Edelgard startling him, “And what did she say?” He asked in a rush, scared that Dimitri must have noticed as well as all the other signs that there was, indeed, something wrong with him.

“Not much. But I’m glad you confessed to me, eventually.” Claude was so glad it was late and dark, so that Dimitri couldn’t catch the blood rushing to his face. The thing Dimitri said at times…”I have to be honest with you. For a second, I thought that I...that you were avoiding _me_. I couldn’t find out why, it drove me crazy.”

“Crazy? Aren’t you a bit over exaggerating?” Claude said with a laugh in his voice, harmless, a way to ease the tension between them.

“I’m afraid I’m not. Claude,” 

And when he took his hand he triggered a storm in Claude’s head, unaware of the power he had on him yet. It was certainly to stress how much he meant his words, and nothing else, Claude couldn’t blame him for the mess he had become, because of a simple touch. Dimitri was pure at heart, Claude was sure of that, and he would never use such tricks on him - he’d rather comfort him directly and speak his mind, like he was doing right now.

“I cannot let you undertone the importance you have in my life. What I said earlier about my father, things like understanding each other with a simple glance, sometimes I feel we share the same thing. And it might sound horribly cheesy to you, that’s perhaps why I’ve hushed this for so long, but after fearing to lose that bond with you I couldn’t keep it all to myself.”

“Losing our bond? What are you talking about?” Claude said, his voice unsure.

“I know. I’m sorry to have doubted you - doubted us - but you know, sometimes the harder you care for something, the easier it is to be scared of having it gone.”

And a couple of weeks ago Claude would have probably found something as well thought and caring to reply, kind words showing his own and equal attachment to their friendship and inaneliable bond. Instead, and to none surprise, Dimitri’s words left Claude speechless in a way he had never been before, and felt like he had been swallowed by the waves and brought in a place far, far away, or in the depth of the sea, from which he would have much trouble to resurface. Claude hated himself for remaining tight as a carp; but unbeknownst to him, his face and especially his eyes, shining in the moonlight, conveyed exactly what his heart was full of, if not more, and Dimitri was far better at reading them than Claude would ever find out. They didn’t say much more and stargazed until their eyes hurt with tiredness, and walked respectively to their bedrooms, their hearts and minds full of unspoken vows of eternal friendship.

  
  


#### 11 - The Concert 

As stated before, Derdriu's major had agreed during Spring to organize several concerts on the beach at certain dates - it was merely a test at that time - and if most spots had quickly been taken by local bands and forgotten has-been disco stars, Claude’s former music school managed to have a spot on the last week of August. In the end, and pushed by Dorothea’s enthusiasm and Edelgard’s words, Claude studied the arrangement she made before leaving, and near the end of Summer they would often practice at the Blaiddyd’s, since they had a piano. They could have gone to Linhardt’s place where he owned a synthé, but going there would have prevent Dimitri to accompany them, despite Linhardt insistment, since Dimitri considered himself not familiar enough with the rest of them to tag along and do nothing but listen to their rehearsal, or worse, distract them.

The partition was hard at first, especially for his rusted hands; but with Dorothea and Linhardt’s advices, Claude got the best of it in time for the concert. Dorothea’s voice was precious and solid as a diamond, sending them shivers each time she sang seriously and gravely. She wanted to enter a real Opera troop and hoped these concerts would be the perfect opportunity to be known a bit more in the area and perhaps to attract curious eyes and ears for contracts. 

Even so young, Claude knew a lot of talented, stubborn, hot minded people who already had a precise idea of what their future would hold, and he was glad at times to have someone as Linhardt by his side, who cared as little as he for these kinds of matters.

In the beginning Claude had to practice alone. Well, not really; Dimitri was never far and often sat next to him, still and silent, and watched over him, watched his hands moving on the keys with a rare devotion. He never minded when Claude repeated the same passage at least thirty times because he couldn’t get it right, and encouraged him each time he played a wrong note. He even sang along at first; but Dimitri had a terrible secret, one he shared with his father. He was a terrible singer, and literally butchered the song for a solid minute before Claude had to beg him to stop, and promise to never try again.

“I can’t say I’m not jealous. Until the end, I would have been useless in helping you practice. I hope you will forgive me.”

“For making my ears bled? I’m not sure I’ll forget it anytime soon.” Claude joked, still playing the end of the song. “But you’re wrong to think you were of no use; every musician needs a public, and you gave us useful advice to improve.”

“I’m not sure my lack of musical knowledge can count as trustworthy advice.”

“But we’re not playing for professionals, we’re playing for people like you.” Claude stopped playing and turned to him by reflex. Their legs touched, they were sitting on the piano seat after all and it wasn’t much larger, especially since they had both grown so much. That’s when he noticed Dimitri was sitting awkwardly, half his right leg in the void to leave Claude comfortably sitting almost in the middle of the seat, ignorant of his friend’s discomfort. It took him a couple of seconds too long to add, after he proceeded this all, “Your help was unhoped for and everything we needed.” And when he looked up Dimitri was frowning, and of course, Claude could have no idea of why.

“...Thank you.” Is all he said, before his eyes came back on the keys, almost hesitantly - as if he had no idea of where to look at anymore. 

Claude slid to the side, offering him to sit properly, and then resumed playing the piano, trying to ignore how with his bold gesture came the warmth of Dimitri’s leg against his own, or how, when he played higher notes, their arms would brush. In a way it was as good a training as any, because if Claude succeeded in playing the whole piece without interrupting, playing in front of an audience would be a piece of cake. Dimitri’s aura and especially so close was more distracting than anything else Claude had lived through so far, and if it weren’t for his daily archery practice, he would have troubled to focus on the song itself, and not on how to touch Dimitri’s skin without being too obvious of his scheme. 

The first time he had studied Edelgard’s partition, he had thought he could never reach her talent; how happy was he now, to play the song exactly as she did, according to Dorothea, and with such ease! As his favourite teacher used to say, practice yielded results.

But happiness and self contentment never came alone in life, and it was a lesson Claude was about to learn, less harshly than it would hit him again in the future. A couple of days before the concert, the Fraldarius received terrible news from the capital, hurring them back before the due time. After a long discussion and for practical reasons more than anything, it was then decided that the Blaiddyd and the Gautier would leave at the same moment, meaning Dimitri would never see the concert, or Claude play, which broke both their hearts, even if they were trying as much as they could not to let it appear. They barely had time to say goodbye. Lambert had Bilal promised to share the video if he were to assist the concert and record his son’s part, and even if Bilal did indeed leave the hotel for a whole hour, bring his camera and film Claude on stage, the content was never shared with any of them, and like pictures stuck on a forgotten photo album at the bottom of the forgotten drawer, the first time they played ‘9th of March’ on the beach was forever lost on a SD card, that was soon to be lost in a messy drawer, in an even messier room.

Claude walked on stage first. He was soon followed by the choar, then Dorothea appeared. It was sunset already, but even in the darkness he saw his friends, Hilda, Yuri, Ashe, even Ferdinand and Marianne were there. Tiana and Bilal were here as well, and when his eyes locked with his mother Claude couldn’t help but grin, proud to have them both here, for him.

He sat in front of the piano. The side of his leg burnt, and when he looked to his right, even if the seat was empty he could see Dimitri as if he were there, see his smile and hear his voice, and he smelt of sea and sand, and Claude could almost touch him.

  
  


#### 12 - The end of Summer.

Due to the Blaiddyd's absence and the general departure from most tourists combined, time went perhaps ten times slower than it used to during August. Claude and his friends could do nothing but watch as the usual pace of Derdriu came back to its agonizing slow routine, where nothing ever happened but daily life, where most the houses near the beach were left empty, and where finally, Claude’s parents could have a bit of respite. 

Yuri was enjoying the last ice cream of summer with Claude at sun set, sitting on the low wall that separated the shop from the beach, his eyes fixated on nothing in particular, not even on the come and goes of the waves that most people found smoothing and mesmerizing, but which for him, who had been working in front of them for two whole months, had lost their previous attraction and beauty. They were just the symptoms of a time that was soon to be gone, only to be replaced by the morosity of Fall. 

“Can’t believe it’s already over.”

Claude had less consideration about the flow of time, and was merely trying not to dirty his shirt with the melting ice cream, and thus had completely missed Yuri’s state of mind. “Summer will come back next year, as it always does.”

“But it won’t be the same.”

Sighing as he realized this time asked for more than empty words of comfort, Claude gobbled the rest of his ice cream, winced when it touched his teeth, and turned back to Yuri; indeed, his friend had looked more melancholic than he thought he was at first. “If you think about it, every day is different. Every hour, every second. Not a single moment is exactly similar to any other.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t be sad about it.”

“No it doesn’t,” Claude gazed to where he thought Yuri was staring so romantically, the sea, the reflexion on its surface; despite the years he’d spent here, it was still the prettiest sight of Derdriu, “What I mean is that new things can only happen if other things are over. And that we should look forward to them. Next Summer might be even better than this one.”

Resting his chin on his hand, Yuri sent him an amused look, that Claude had learned to fear and escape as fast as he could. “Speak for yourself, would you? I wonder how next summer would turn out…” he chucked, an even worse omen. “Oh, indeed, you were right, again. Now, I’m looking forward to next summer.” He got on his feet, ignoring how his cryptic words again puzzled Claude, and delighted himself at the sight. “Oh, look who’s there.”

They heard before they could see Hapi coming back from downtown with Constance. Constance was one of Yuri’s best friends, but never spent summers here; she hated the sun and the heat. Sometimes Claude wondered if she wouldn’t get along well with Edelgard or Hubert. They talked briefly about her vacation in Svreng before Constance complained about her lack of ability to make her tale entertaining, and then looked over Hapi so she could finish the story herself. With lassitude written all over her feature, Hapi let out a sigh.

As summoned by her exasperation, the Gonerils’ siblins walked by them along with Balthus, Holst’s best friend, and who Claude knew was also a friend of Yuri. The whole of them stayed, facing the sea, talking about the end of summer, and about their plans for the future.

“I don’t want to repeat a year.” Hilda groaned, and soon Holst was patting her back rather harshly for her frail figure - but that was just the kind of man Holst was.

“Don’t worry, if it comes to this, I’ll tutor you myself.” He kindly offered, to which Hilda’s responded by sending a distressed look toward Claude, who promptly understood her message. She would not repeat a year, he’d make sure of it.

“I wonder if there’s something else we could sell,” Yuri thought aloud, again, finding no added value to learning things at school - he had always been more of a self taught than anyone Claude knew. “But there’s so few people here outside of Summer.”

“I’ve got a couple of ideas, but I’m not sure your mom will agree.” 

Hapi knocked Balthus' head, and the topic was soon forgotten for other lighter topics, and club activities and such, and last week’s concert.

“Are you going to play again?” Hilda asked Claude.

“Honestly? Don’t think so.” There were still so many things he wanted to try. Now that Claude proved to himself he was capable of playing even difficult pieces, the challenge lost its thrill, and worse, Claude found out he had no will to play the piano anymore, or to practice any sort of instrument. He enjoyed archery or chess way more. It was naturally that he decided, since he had so little time to spare, to use all his free time on learning Almyrian before the end of the year, and definitely abandoned music, which he told Dorothea who accepted kindly. He would not play any song with her on stage, but it didn’t mean they wouldn’t be able to celebrate their love for music elsewhere. Besides, Dorothea was not alone: Linhardt and Caspar were part of the orchestra and they didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “But I’m glad you thought it was something I ought to do after my performance. Does it mean it was of your taste?”

“The song is pretty. Dorothea sings like an angel.” Hilda let out a sigh after her statement, her eyes on the waves. “I wish I was this pretty and this talented.”

“And less lazy.” Claude added.

Everyone laughed wholeheartedly, then their voices hushed with the weight of melancholia, of the memories of a carefree time they would all have wished to last forever. None of them noticed when their professor walked their way, with a sac of fishes on their back.

“Professor Eisner!” Claude exclaimed, he saw her first, “Do you need help to carry all this?”

“Good evening Claude, and the rest of you. What are you doing here?” She utterly ignored Claude’s concern and gave the rest of them a harsh look. “If you have time to leisure, then it means you’re all ready for the year to come, or so I hope. Are you, Hilda?”

“Yelp!”

“And you, Yuri? Will I have the chance and pleasure to see you in class this year?”

“If it is asked so gently.” Yuri bowed which only made his friends laugh again, then hushed when Professor Eisner stared back again, her eyes black as coal. 

“You should all go back home and prepare. This year is going to be important, more than you think. It’s now that you need to acquire all the knowledge you’ll need for the following year; otherwise,” her eyes stopped on Hilda, “You won’t be able to follow half of my course before your college entrance exam.”

With his head full of questions and hopes for his future, Claude went home and laid on his bed and stared at the star on the ceiling. He couldn’t wait for the year to be over already, he couldn’t wait to move forward, he couldn’t wait to see Dimitri again.

‘Dorothea called El to tell her about your performance. She told me you did great. I hope I can see you play next year.’

Claude kept reading Dimitri’s last message, beaming as he imagined his friend’s voice, the shape of his lips and how they’d move, and the spark in his eyes, the one that’s always there when he talked about what he cared for - Dimitri cared for Claude, and that alone was enough to send him to a comfortable sleep, even so close from the first day of school, so close to an uncertain future.

‘Until then, I’ll miss you.’ He typed. But Claude never sent it, argumenting to whoever would ask, that it was not a symptom of cowardice but that, in the end, he found the words not important enough for Dimitri to know.

The upcoming year would bring a lot of change in Claude’s life. Hilda would truly become his best friend that year, and from that point of time would always stay by his side, no matter the circumstances. By the end of Fall, Claude would learn the Almyrian’s alphabet and translate whatever he could find on his own. In December 2005, just as he was about to ask if he could go spend winter holidays at the Blaiddyd’s to celebrate Dimitri’s birthday, Claude saw a newspaper in their living room and recognized letters he had only had the chance to see a couple of books. It was an Almyrian’s newspaper. It didn’t take long for him to realize why his father had looked so serious and grave these days when he paid a bit more attention on the head lines. He didn’t understand much, but knew enough to decipher a couple of words.

Conflits. Death. War.

In 2006 there was a coup in Almyra. This year, Claude would learn that his aunt, the youngest of Bilal’s sisters, was part of the opposition and had no choice but to flee home clandestinely, and where else to find refuge than across the sea, to her deer older brother's hotel?

In 2006, Claude would meet aunt Judith at last. And if this fateful meeting would open Claude’s eyes and change his life forever, that would not be the biggest disruption in his life.

Far from it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Cornerstone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Come.” He said, before he realized what he was doing, he was dragging Dimitri away from their group in the middle of the improvised dance floor, and to his surprise, Dimitri followed without any resistance.
> 
> “Thank you.” Despite the music, his words were crystal clear to his ear, because Dimitri had leaned so close to it to be heard, and the sudden proximity ran a shiver down Claude’s spine. He could smell his perfume so well know that Dimitri’s neck was flirting so close to the tip of his nose.
> 
> It didn’t get any better when Dimitri curled an arm behind his waist, and only then Claude remembered what they were supposed to do now; dancing. He let himself slide against Dimitri’s shirt, his eyes a moment lost on his collarbones, before he figured he had to put his own arms somewhere - they ended on Dimitri’s shoulders, and eventually their eyes met, and they had rarely been so close and so hot, that Claude was sure a part of his mind was melting away. Everything appeared so clearly, as if he hadn’t seen Dimitri in ages.
> 
> It was impossible for Dimitri not to know then, how bewitched Claude was by him, and how little he needed to push him to break the thick line between friends and lovers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playlist here

* * *

# Bye Bye, Derdriu

.

* * *

#### Book Three : Cornerstone

Sprint and Summer 2006

_1 - Oswald’s request_

_2 - Judith_

_3 - Befriending Hilda Goneril_

_4 - Agony in Spring_

_5 - Ten years later_

_6 - The Girl in the Whine Bikini (first watch)_

_7 - Fly away_

_8 - Heritage_

_9 - Makes me want to blow the candles out just to see if you glow in the dark_

_10 - The aftermath_

_11 - Cornerstone (part 1)_

_12 - 9th of March_

_13 - Cornerstone (part 2)_

_14 - Damage control_

_15 - Goodbyes_

* * *

#### 1 - Oswald’s request

First and foremost, the subject of the Von Riegan’s family needed to be addressed. 

As we had seen before, Tiana was not on good terms with her father. To her greatest relief her mother had started a new life after their divorse in 1985, and married a young actor in 1988, who she divorced three years later, etc, etc. She was still well known from the public for her roles and talents, which Tiana was very glad for, and when Christmas came, she would always be glad to have her home and have her gone the following day. She always spoiled Claude far too much, and left behind a check that Tiana always kept for Claude’s future, and had always refused to use even when their finances weren’t in the best. They talked few, and their conversations were never important; all seemed futile in her mother’s world, and at times, Tiana feared she saw them as a relicat of her own past and nothing more, an appendix of some sort she had some obligation to, and one day Tiana even wondered, if Claude were never born, if her mother would come for Christmas or even call, and if she would care at all. That was her chaotic relationship with her mother, a woman she never could admire, a woman who showed her all the mistakes she carefully avoided, and who in her poor choice of life paved the path of Tiana’s independence, and assuredly the key to her success and happiness. For all these reasons, and despite being so different and from opposite worlds, Tiana could never not love her.

The same couldn’t be said for her father. Oswald Von Riegan had merely become a name she read on Christmas cards and movie magazines more than a paternal figure, and thus as soon as she had, despite his warning, married Bilal at the age of 22; by doing so Oswald considered she had severed her bonds with her family, and never wished to speak with her again. But if vanity and pride were ruling his character, Oswald was not insensible, and he still was her father at heart; when he heard, from his friends, that the Almyra was in financial trouble, he proposed his help more than once, and never discouraged in front of Tiana’s refusal. When Claude came he tried to renew a semblance of relationship with his daughter, but still hurt by her countless affronts, could never do more than send a card and money, which he had abundantly. Claude saw him once or twice when he was very little and had not a fond memory of the man, for he had been cold and tense and couldn’t smile at him. His loss never affected him, not after he expected the loss of a close friend, and he never asked for his presence even when he got older, and knew the man existed, and noticed his absence.

This was the situation with the Von Riegan at the end of Fall 2005. Christmas was coming and Tiana almost looked forward to seeing her mother, for a change, when she received a call from her father.

Claude had never seen his mother so puzzled by a phone call. At first he could read annoyance, then panic on her face; but she merely frowned until she hung up, and walked straight to the register desk.

“Five rooms, can you imagine? Why that?” She talked to herself. At dinner, she would inform them that Oswald had booked rooms for some of his friends in the middle of February, which was by far the worst moment to visit Derdriu, and she couldn’t help but hate the idea. Was he trying to judge her choice of life again? Was he going to take Claude away from them? But it had nothing to do with Claude, of Tiana, or even Bilal to begin with. There was something greater in mouvement, and this reservation was just the beginning of it.

  
  


#### 2 - Judith

Before the beginning of January 2006 Claude had seen Judith only in photographs. One where she was two, a couple of days before his father left Almyra, and a couple of ones Bilal stored on a not so secret file on their shared desktop, that Claude once searched out of spite and full of the rebellion of adolescence, and never touched again. If he had to describe her he’d say she looked a lot like his father: same hair, eyes and skin colour; her shoulders were large but her look was warm. She was taller than most of his uncles, and perhaps just as tall as Claude who seemed to have reached his bloom. He hadn’t gained any centimetre in months while Dimitri was still growing and growing, as a metaphor of the place he was now holding in Claude’s heart and mind,, and for which Claude decided he wouldn’t do anything but accept his sentimental attachment.

The political situation in Almyra had been a total mystery to him before, so when Bilal had to drive to Fhirdiad, if at first Claude had proposed to come along, thinking he could perhaps have the opportunity to stay at Dimitri’s place during the winter break for a change, the look his father gave him shut him up for good, and taught him about the emergency of the situation. His father was leaving the day after and leaving the Hotel utterly to Tiana. Claude had no choice but to stay behind to help her, and missed a couple of days at school in order to complete his missions properly, and the day his father eventually returned and not alone only did Claude perceived what forces had been at stake, and how of a foolish and selfish boy he had been. 

At his father’s side stood his aunt, wounded, her shoulder bandaged and cuts and bruises that even reached her face - more were there, most probably, that she skillfully concealed under her long sleeves and turtleneck, but just by judging on the way she limped, the damages had been deeper than she wanted to let appear. Claude was surprised at first as she spoke so fluently with him and Tiana, and with such ease in Almarian with her older brother that for a couple of days Claude felt jealous. But that was not why he avoided talking to her in private, at least for the first week of her long stay, as she was to remain in Foldan for more than a year. Claude’s avoidance had more of how she truly made him feel like a small child, ignorant and powerless, how despite her wounds and the pain she had had to endure her stare was still strong and determined, as if she had suffered through Hell and came back only more powerful than before. This Judith impressed him, more than any picture he had seen, and after he finally had the courage to approach her, helped and encouraged by his mother, Claude found out his aunt had all sort of strengths, as she forgave him for his former fear and prejudice on her character before Claude was aware of their existence. As he had guessed from a young age, her soul was as warm as were her words and eyes, and she told Claude a lot more in a few days than his father had dared to hush in years, about the place they came from, and the chaos she had to leave behind.

“I’ve been part of the opposition for a couple of years. There was a vote, the first in a decade, and we had proof the results were falcifiated. They stole the people’s freedom.” She held her broken arm as she spoke, as if more than the physical pain, hushing the voice of democracy was the cause of her wrath. “To make a century long story short, we tried to make a coup, but we underestimated their cruelty.”

She didn’t wish to tell him all in details for they had decided, with his father, that Claude was still a bit too young to be aware of such horrors; but none knew yet he was able to read Almyrian, at least a bit, and the few he managed already told him all the worst that humanity had to offer. The military regime shot their own citizens, their own people, fleshes and bones of its children, and Judith had miraculously survived to tell the horrible truth. She was to remain here to rest and hide, as most thought her dead, and Claude only realized now she was important enough to be a threat to Almyra’s dictature.

“I didn’t even know.” Claude confessed. They so rarely talked about it in school. Fodlan’s history was already such a wide subject, and not even addressed in its entirety, to care about a small, insignificant insulary island, who had nothing to offer but sand and spices and war.

The book he was holding picked Judith’s interest. “Are you trying to learn?” It was his Almyrian book, worned, and which he had read countless times, but provided him improvement no longer. She looked over it briefly. “Hum, you’re good. But this won’t make you any better. You need a better tool.”

“Hn?” He gazed at her, and from that time she only replied to him in Almyrian.

From the corner of his eyes Bilal was watching those two with a hint of amusement; reflecting on his own behaviour, he felt ashamed to have hid a part of himself that had refuted him so long ago when he married Tiana - but that was a detail Claude did not need to know, and which Judith, wise as she was, would most likely never share as well - and decided that, perhaps, it was time to tell Claude about his heritage, or at least, part of it.

For Claude was too much already to be reduced by the place half his blood belonged.

  
  


#### 3 - Befriending Hilda Goneril

The year 2006 was the end and the beginning of a lot of things, and certainly the cornerstone of what would make Claude as a man in a couple of years. If the major part of it would happen on one particular night in the end of July, his friendship with Hilda Goneril was, certainly, the biggest other addition to his life, more than everything he learned about Almyra and aunt Judith reunited.

Hilda was born in a loving family, which was perhaps what cursed her right from the start. She was loved, and cherished, and from the very beginning she was excused of any kind of effort. One could say the mind of a adult started to forge during childhood, and it couldn’t have been more true for Hilda; the day she understood that as long as she would smile and ask thing nicely and feign to be weak, other people would always answer her plead was the beginning of most of her problems, or ones she unknowingly inflicted to others. She was a good person at heart, and only wished for happiness, but her own lied in idleness for most of her young years, and she had too much of a liking for easy things to be diligent and rideious. It was almost too late for her when she met Claude, but as much as she was to be his saviour, he gave her, in their shared friendship and affection, a reason and the means to surpass herself and conquer her own flaws.

To get a better picture of Hilda Goneril, one would have to imagine a sweet girl, about five or six, crying to her big brother about this and that - to her mother and father too, but it was mostly Holst that spoiled her the most - and replied to all her caprice with an immediate satisfaction. The absence of any kind of frustration vaccinated her of any king of effort years later, and she decided as soon as she exited primary school that she would devote her life to do the minimum possible, as long as she could get to her goal. By doing so, she used all sorts of schemes and methods that Claude would often speak highly of as purely genius, a thing Hilda would always fail to see. She had been described so many times and by so many as lazy and a lost cause, that the remarks blinded her of her own skills that she thought, for a long time, that she truly was a good for nothing, and thought she was okay with it. In this aspect, Claude saved her in return, and they would remain best friends even beyond this story reaches its end.

The occasion which brought them together was of great embarrassment for Claude; and if not for the awesome friend he found at the end of the day, it would remain as one of his biggest regrets, and would go as far as sell a kidney to relive the scene and erase it all. Of course, as soon as anything related to putting Claude unease was whispered, Yuri was there, and he was in fact who started it all.

“Have you ever kissed anyone?” She asked them.

The question was purely genuine, and asked without ill intent; but Hilda wasn’t Yuri, and even without looking back Claude knew he was hiding a smile, internally boiling.

“And you?” He replied with a question, feeling that more than knowing the truth, Hilda looked for an occasion to speak of the subject.

He hit right, again, and the way she was gazing at the sky, playing with her hair - a brand on top of her lip, drawing an elegant moustache - gave away her initial thoughts. “Not yet. I know I could. I know a lot of people would beg for a kiss of me - mind you, of course I know. I just don’t want to. Boys are gross.”

“If you say so.” Yuri said, amused.

“I mean, not you two, obvious.”

“But we never tried to kiss you.” Claude remarked.

Hilda laughed, the brand of hair fell from her lips. “That would be the cherry on the cake!”

“If I were you I wouldn’t be so scare of us; I like older girls,” he confessed, a thing Claude ignored so far - they never really talk about the subject, like most boys of their age - and when he gazed back quite bemused, of the timing and content of the revelation, it was only to Yuri staring back with the same look he had witnessed countless time since the end of last summer, that seemed to hush to him again, _‘Pretty eyes, hn?’_ , and again, and again, and- “And Claude has a thing for blonds.”

“What?” Hilda exclaimed, alone, for Claude had turned to stone, his fingers clenching on the sand, and as if he had been bitten by a viper he rose to his feet a second later, his face red and warm despite the coolness of the first days of March. How did Yuri dare betray him !? How did he know? How could he…

“Claude, you need to tell me. Is it Constance? Yuri, is it her?” And of course Yuri shook his head, a smile still on his face, and deep down, Claude guessed he meant no harm - perhaps he even thought he was _actually_ helping - but couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that he would want very much to smash his face on the shore at this precise moment.

“Who then, if not her? I don’t know any other blonds! Oh, how is that woman at the vacation camp Claude spent the Summer in?”

“Catherine and Shamir,” Yuri informed her, as Claude was trying to walk away since he had been unable to hide his flusterness, and feigning indifference would be, then, quite impossible, leaving a strategic retreat the best of options. “But I fear you’re wrong once more, dear Hilda; Shamir is the once who trains Claude, and she has hair as deep as the night.”

“And she’s older, too,” Claude might have there the perfect come back. “Is she of your licking?”

And Yuri replied to his provokation with a smile, as always, as if nothing, no malice could ever surprise him. “She’s more than okay.”

“Oh! No! I know,” Hilda hit her fist in the palm of her hand, her eyes sparkling, looking at Claude, “It’s Ingrid, isn’t it?”

The boys laughed at the absurdity of it all, for Ingrid had, in the rare times she had spent here, a temper so different from Claude that it would make the eventuality quite comical, but deep inside Claude feared Hilda was hitting closer to home, as she had proposed of a name from his Summer friends, and Dimitri’s name was flirting dangerously close.

After this little incident Claude would express his resentment by ignoring Yuri for an entire week, refusing to answer his calls or going out after chess club, and found himself, a bit despite himself, spending more time with Hilda. The scheme was all hers, and her previous ask not so innocent in fact; at this period of time she might have found opportune to have her first kiss stolen by a boy she thought she liked more than a friend, who shone by his wit and quality of mind, and contrasted so much, in her opinion, to her own flaws. It would be her secret until they fatally parted, one she would never tell anyone, but which some might have perceived - such as Yuri, her brother and perhaps Balthus, who was acquainted with both. It was then sort of logical to find Hilda and Claude tied to the hip, but different forces and aims were at hands : one was avoiding the company of some while the other was enjoying the one she purposely sought for.

What betrayed Claude in the end was a succession of little details he let pass, and his extraordinary misjudge of Hilda’s character and perception’s skill, of her sensibility in understanding the condition of the heart and reading the mood. Especially after she witnessed him looking at his phone every five seconds, and only beamed when he received the awaited reply; so of course came the ask:

“Who is it?”

And Claude couldn’t help reply:

“Oh, just Dimitri.”

Just Dimitri. Just everything.

And he didn’t say anything more but even now, even this early Hilda had a feeling, years before Claude realized; and he never said it, with words at least, but his eyes were so full of adoration, and his smile so sincere and warmth, that she thought he might be in love, already, and that it must be what love could do to someone when it eventually striked.

She held the secret close to herself for some time, not before she utterly forgot why, in the first place, she had wanted a kiss from him. She recovered quite fast and a week later, she came to the Almyra with a history essay to write, which Claude promised he would help, and she saw the smile again; Claude was in front of their computer and typing, and he certainly had no idea of how he looked to others. He was perfect at this moment, she thought, he was so utterly happy that it embellished his feature and he gleamed with glee.

She didn’t need to ask. “Was it just Dimitri?” She did anyway, and was glad to have, for Claude somehow blushed, flabbergasted by such comment, and dropped his eyes to the ground.

His cheeks burned still when he replied, with a shyness he rarely used, and which told more about the degree of closeness they had reached than about the delicacy of the subject at hand, “Yes.”

They finished Hilda’s essay near midnight, and deciding it was definitely too late to let her come back alone, spent the night in Claude’s room - a mattress was put near Claude’s bed, which Claude used, while Hilda took his bed. They spent the night talking, of everything in general, and Dimitri in particular.

The following day, Claude felt perhaps a bit lighter.

“It’s just a phase.” He told her. Yes, he liked Dimitri, more than a friend should, even when they have known each other for so long, but Claude was rational, and perhaps thought himself mature, more than the others at least. It couldn’t be more than a puppy love, the first in his life, answered to his raise of hormones and he had to choose someone to suffer from it - who then, who else than the human being he adored and knew the most? 

So when he said it was just a phase, he truly believed it. 

Hilda, on the other hand, did not.

  
  


#### 4 - Agony in Spring

Nothing could summarise the three following months until Dimitri’s return better than what Yuri called, in an attempt to humour his anguish, as the ‘Spring agony’. Hopefully, even in this little town with nothing really to do to kill time, especially at this time of the year, Claude never lacked the imagination to occupy his mind and find more goals. And if at night, when his eyes were closed or fixed on his lucky star, he often thought of Dimitri, during the days he managed, as best as he could, not to look at his phone every hour to see if his best friend had replied, as he didn’t run to the computer when he reached home, or clenched his fist when his father was using it.

Yet, he wasn’t blind, and it was only a question of time until those feelings that were supposedly ‘just a phase’ settled for good, and to never really go away - but that, Claude couldn’t have known, even if he were to be perceptive of his own emotion, which he was not to begin with. It showed in little things, little frustrations - unanswered messages, missed phone calls, short conversation over messenger - and inappropriate responses to everytime he could get in touch with Dimitri, with too big smiles, too loud voices, his too enthusiastic pace as he walked to turn on the computer, or even how he woke up earlier when Dimitri asked it of him so they can talk a little before he had to study.

Studying, they sure were doing it a lot; when he was not helping Hilda or talking in Almyrian with aunt Judith, Claude could be seen in the library or at the archery field, the only place where he actually managed to get rid of Dimitri, and which offered him, unexpectedly, the peace of mind he had been looking for all this time. Arrows after arrows he won competitions one after the others, succeeded his test with the highest marks, and in the blink of an eye it was the beginning of June. Time had never been so difficult to grasp, as it seemed to be stretching endlessly until Dimitri’s return, but also left Claude with the impression that he couldn’t remember what he had done the two months before. 

“You’re always thinking about him.”

It wasn’t even a question, but Claude replied to Hilda as if she meant it that way. “I do not. Only when times ask for it.”

Her eyes were on the book they were reading. Arithmetics. She said she truly wanted to understand this if she wanted to open her own shop one day. “Sure. You’ve been checking your phone ten times already and we’ve been here for ten minutes.” She hushed.

Claude rolled his eyes and put his phone away to prove her wrong, but only hurt his pride as he found himself hopeless when his eyes instinctively checked for a message that still wasn’t there and ended on an empty table. It was merely one of the numerous symptoms Claude was blind to, and which got him self conscious for quite a while. If Hilda saw them, who else would?

Concerning the Almyra’s inhabitant, he had no reason to be anxious, for they had other things to deal with at the moment, and hiding Judith from the world was their top priority. Oswald’s friends came in February and left a couple of days later, and since that day a shorter team had stayed in the hotel for months. Since the beginning of June new people were coming that weren’t tourists - at least not in Tiana’s opinion and she had quite the experience - and, along with them, other people were lurking around the hotel. Two hypotheses were raised, and none pleased any of them: either it was a plan orchestrated by old Oswald to mess with their reputation, or someone was looking for Judith.

In a sort of paranoia only the atrocity of war could inflict, Bilal and Judith were on nerves, and they barely noticed any change in Claude’s behaviour. Tiana, too worried about her husband and angry at her father, was not doing any better, but her son’s exploits didn’t pass unnoticed to her. And since her little Claude spent half of his time with the Goneril girl, she hadn’t tried to look any further - she kept with the easy clues, and didn’t see the smallest, which would have truly betrayed who her son’s heart had a weakness for.

Claude had figured out this much in a simple glance, after he’d learned his mistakes. Adults were too busy to be adults to care for a puppy love anyway, it made sense, but what about his friends? What about _Dimitri’s_ friends?

They would all be there this summer. Sylvain, Felix, Ingrid, Glenn. And more people were probably going to join - Marianne, Ferdinand, Dorothea, Linhardt, Caspar, who else was he missing? What other party could come into their group and witness a stolen glance, a smile being hid barely on time, eyes being blown too wilde under the sun and put two and two together?

And what about Edelgard?

“It’s funny how you’re thinking about everyone but him.”

Yes, what about Dimitri? What if he found out?

“She’s right,” Yuri was talking with his mouth full, oh, he had put some eyeshadow recently, when did he start? “But after all perhaps it’s your best chance. You’ve been agonising all this time, over a year, for this guy. Perhaps it’s time he finds out. If he doesn’t, are you just gonna pretend it will pass? I’m not gonna watch you like this for another year.”

“Yeah, me too.” Hilda joined him.

Claude put his burger on his lap, “Hey, what do you mean by ‘like this’?”

“Like, I don’t know how to say,” Hilda looked over to Yuri for help, but he showed his absence of interest in rescuing her by taking a new bite on his food, “It’s like you’re a robot. You’re always doing something. You never relax, you’re always tense, or dense or something.”

Claude laughed bitterly, where did she get all these ideas? “I’m not-”

“You’ve spent the last three months trying very hard not to be yourself. It’s kind of unsettling.” Yuri said. “At least, that’s what I felt.”

“Not myself?” He didn’t understand.

“Oh! I have this one! Claude, it’s like,” Hilda bit her lips, she was thinking hard for the right word, “Like you were rejecting a part of you. The part that loves Dimitri. Since you admitted it aloud, you fought against the idea to push it away, thinking perhaps it will make your feeling vanish, but by doing so you shut down a whole part of yourself!”

“Your whole self, even.” 

“This is ridiculous.” Claude humoured them, but his teeth were biting on his plastic straw before he sucked up his cola. 

“I’m just saying that it’s painful to watch you reject this part of your past, present and future, for something I can’t quite comprehend. What are you scared of?” Yuri asked him.

His voice was nowhere aggressive but Claude felt threatened, and couldn’t understand why. “I’m not scared. And I’m not behaving any different.”

“Yes you are.”

“I’m not!” Claude went on his feet. His hand found the basket a couple of metres away and threw his trash inside.

“Perhaps you’re not doing it on purpose, but you’re more...shut out than before. And people will notice if you keep going like this, I think.” Hilda said more posely.

“Dimitri will definitely notice something’s up with you.”

Again, Yuri’s insinuation rubbed his skin the wrong way. He clenched his fist.

“This leaves us to the same point. Do you want things to change? Are you ready to tell him you love him, or ready to endure another year living in the shadow of your longtime friendship, when you crave for more?”

“I don’t-” But he stopped there. He was tired of maintaining this act, that only worked for himself it seemed. The tendons on the back of his hands tensed.

“You’re scared he’d rejected you?”

Claude turned to Hilda and let out a sigh, that must have held more than a breath but all his worries for the future as well, because the next moment he felt a lot lighter - but not less unhappy about his situation. “We’ve been friends forever. I can’t see a life without him. What if I ruin it all? What if he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore?”

“But what if he loves you back?” Yuri inquired, forcing Claude to frown and fisted his shirt where his heart lied. That what if was a scenario he had been too scared to elaborate on. “Perhaps he will not immediately fall into your arms, but if he doesn’t know you’re waiting for him, he isn’t going to run to you.”

A smile escaped his lips, once Yuri didn’t understand; if only he knew, this was exactly how each of their reunion went by, since they were two years old.

“Trying to give him clues doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I’ll try to help! Try to flirt with him to see if he likes…” Hilda proudly raised her chest and shook her shoulders, “Curves.”

“Women.” Yuri rectified.

Claude burst out of laughing. “Flirting with Dimitri? Good luck. If only you knew half of what El tells me.”

“El? Tells you?” Hilda raised to her feet as well and walked to him. “Does she know about your feelings?”

Officially she did not, but somehow the memory of that last year left him wondering; what if she had seen him staring at Dimitri and found out, back then? What if she was telling him all of Dimitri’s misadventures with girls constantly trying to have his attention and poorly failing, as if he was incapable of seeing their ulterior motives?

Was she doing it as a sister and a friend, or did she also have ulterior motives of her own? Was it a way to reassure him that he was still single, or a warning that if things continue that way, he wouldn’t be for long?

“In any cases, I’d advise you to get your answer quickly. Life hates hesitation.” Yuro threw his own goblet in the bin, “Tell him that you love him before you found out it’s too late.”

Claude never heard the bitterness in Yuri’s words, which would come back to bite him in good time, in a couple of weeks.

  
  


#### 5- Ten years later

When Claude was seven, that day on the beach when he had finally reunited with Dimitri after years of separation, the year Edelgard had appeared holding Lambert’s hand, he had run and then he had stopped.

He had stopped because for a second he had caught eyes with Dimitri and had seen in them nothing he had wanted, or rather they had lacked everything he had desperately needed. He had wished, dreamed, anticipated this moment for months and couldn’t comprehend how Dimitri couldn’t have shared the same feeling as he. But time taught him he had been, that day, perhaps a bit too much of an egoist brat, and that at that time, six years old Dimitri, short of a mother and accepting two other women in his life, had better things to do than be delicate to his only friend’s anguish, which he didn’t know exist to begin with.

Ten years later, Claude ran to Dimitri on the beach and halted, but for entire other reasons.

This year the Blaiddyd came in late and would go early, and stayed only six weeks in Derdriu for the summer. Claude would turn seventeen in two weeks, the weather was ideal even for Derdriu - meaning there was, presently, not as much wind as one would have imagined. 

And he was still the same seven years old boy, impatient to meet again with his best friend, with Dimitri, the one who mattered the most. But he halted halfway, and this time he saw the perplexity his sudden withdrawal elected in Dimitri’s eyes, and he had never wished more to be able to run, run to him, and wrap him in his embrace.

His legs couldn’t move. Dimitri was standing so close and he hadn’t seen him in so long, and if only he knew how terribly any pictures he sent him or their time spent chatting over a webcam did him justice. Had he really developed such pretty features while Claude was not truly looking, or was it some romantic bullshit he read in literature - did love make someone beautiful or was it the opposite? Dimitri’s gorgeousness hit him like the waves hit the rocks in front of the Almyra’s front door and something terribly hot and violent rose from his chest to his throat, taking with it his heartbeat and whatever he chose to have for breakfast and he couldn’t breath, couldn’t move, couldn’t talk. Dimitri’s smile, hesitant, worried even, was welcomed like a punch in the face, and it then became apparent that Yuri had been right, and that to his question, an answer would soon be vital.

It would have perhaps take a day or two for someone, normal let’s say, to overcome their emotion and this rare and pure moment of epiphany; to be gifted with the grace of falling in love on the beach while the sun rose, only interrupted by joggers who minded their own business or their dogs, if they were running with them, and the waves, their endless lullaby; it was certain that most people would need a moment to recover, and at least a minute or two to catch back their breath. But Claude was not of those people. It took him a couple of blinks and a deep breath and the truth was accepted, and he buried it deep inside for a time, at least for today, and painted on his tormented face a smile that reached his eyes, and when finally Dimitri was at arm’s reach he opened his like wings.

“Dimiti.”

Dimitri laughed quietly, his breath was tickling his hair; how much more did he grow? “I’m back.” He said.

And hidden by his embrace, his face secured against his shoulder Claude released his true smile, warmth and sad and so earnest, emotions he concealed and would keep to himself, at least as long as they were so loud, as long as they would make his face so hot and mess his thoughts so much that he couldn’t think of anything but holding Dimitri against his chest, and of how nice it would be to never let him go.

  
  


#### 6 - The Girl in the White Bikini (first watch)

Apart from the Blaiddyd, the party which spent the six following weeks in Derdriu composed as follows. Felix and Glenn came with Sylvain and Ingrid, along with the Fraldarius' parents, and stayed in the Almyra for the whole period. As expected Dedue and his mother were on the trip, but as expected as well they barely interacted with the rest of the group, and Dedue remained with his mother most of the time unless there was a party on the beach, which this particular year, happened more than none.

Alone in his room, Claude pondered how to navigate between all those people, who knew Dimitri perhaps as well as himself - or at least, a side of Dimitri he barely had the chance to see - without them finding out his growing feelings for him. If their reunion had taught him anything, it was that contrary to what he thought it would be nothing but simple, and Claude would probably need a couple of advices, from Hilda or Yuri and even from more, if he wanted his secret to remain concealed to unwanted ears, at least not until the prime actor was aware of their existence. Started a game Claude was a novice at, in which he was trying to see if Dimitri could be returning those feelings of longing, or if he already had someone else in mind, in which case the game would be over and lost, and Claude's heart reduced into dust.

In this new adventure he found unexpected help, not from Dimitri's friends, but from Edelgard herself. She told him as soon as the second day, in a subtle way, Dimitri's relationship status, which was in her words 'desperately single' despite a constant attention of the other sex, to which Edelgard commanded again to a very attentive Claude, that perhaps he was 'not interested in their general charms', the whole thing being said without holding his gaze, but with words definitely for him to hear. 

"Do you want me to ask her directly?" Hilda was tired of Claude dancing around, and figured Edelgard would never flatly ask or confess one of the boy's puppy love to the other, as she couldn't betray their trust. "But perhaps she'll talk to one of us. The situation is so frustrating she must need an ear to complain to."

Claude instantaneously thought of Dorothea and they met in the middle of the second third week of July, a couple of days away from Claude's birthday. But she had other plans in head, and barely listened to a word Claude said.

"Can you imagine? They are doing a remake ! For the 50th anniversary!"

The movie she was talking about was of course ‘The Girl in the White Bikini’, the one which gave Derdriu its first notoriety, and this new adaptation was to be called, in all simplicity, 'La Casancanda'. Scouts were in town - half of them actually staying at the Almyra, thanks to old Oswald - to look for local actors, which was why Dorothea was absolutely thrilled and looking for this year's concert, hoping to catch the eyes of some important producers. She somehow managed to hype Hilda with her and the topic of Dimitri was long abandoned and never addressed again. It turned out Ingrid had always been a fan of La Casagranda and had accepted to come here, in first place, for that reason only, which proved to Claude that it was still possible to have heard of Derdriu solely from this old 60s movie, and that they would never be totally protected from being trendy again. 

As he discussed the matter later with Dimitri - because at the end of the day he couldn’t avoid him, and never really wanted to - it turned out none of them had seen the fateful movie, and when Ingrid found out, her eyes had something a little bit crazy that scared them so much they lent the DVD the following day.

Claude had never been an amateur of movies, especially old ones - going to the theatre was too expensive for them or Yuri anyway - and this one wouldn’t change his mind. Claude wondered during the whole movie why so many people liked it, especially Ingrid, because if it was far from being the worst he had watched so far, the scenario held little interest - a young girl, an old celebrity, an affair on the Beach, a tragic end - and Claude was immune to the actress’ beauty. He chuckled to himself, thinking how Yuri would have said, to share a good word, that she wasn’t blond enough.

He was relieved when Dimitri shared his reserve, which were of the same kind, and they both agreed that if they wanted to go through this summer unharmed, they’d rather fake mild amusement and praise of the iconic actress than being honest with themselves.

All in all, what Claude would remember of this evening would certainly be Dimitri’s warmth when they sat side by side, and how he caught his gaze, bored by what displayed on screen perhaps, tried to catch his countless time. The only thing that made him fail was Claude’s resolve, who was forced by the presence of others around them to keep his eyes on the television, in fear of showing more than he was willing to of his ambition. And Dimitri’s blatant lack of interest for La Casagranda’s plastic piled on other clues, and designed a pleasant picture, one where Dimitri had no interest in women in general, and where Claude’s dream could then come true.

  
  


#### 7 - Fly away

The sun had barely been up when Claude was awakened by the engine. He heard his mother’s and Judith’s voice soon after and knew that with the increasing noise of footsteps coming his way that he could say goodbye to sleeping in on his birthday, a habit - a tradition ! - he had had for sixteen years now. He let out a sigh and was sitting on his bed when Tiana opened the door without knocking.

“Happy birthday!”

What surprised him yet was the presence of someone else beside her, who also explained the noise that had awakened him. Dimitri stood, fresh and smiling and impossibly beautiful - at least, the halo around his head, that Claude blamed on his I-had-just-awakened state, made him seem dreamy, almost unreal - and Claude wondered how could anyone be beaming so much so early in the morning.

Another unpleasant surprise awaited him as they brought him downstairs : he was to go as soon as he got dressed, short of his birthday’s breakfast - which was pure _treason_ \- to a place unknown. If it hadn’t been Dimitri taking him on a ride, Claude would have called it a prank, and refused to participate in such ignominy. But all his frustration evaporated with the sight of the sun on the horizon, still wearing his orange coat, and which reflected on the sea, and made Dimitri’s hair shine with strings of gold.

He shouldn’t have been surprised to walk to the motorbike since it was what awoke him first thing in the morning. Yet Claude found himself a bit unsettled at the sight, partially because he hadn’t anticipated that they would ride together, and what it implied - a close contact, his chest against Dimitri’s strong back, his nose in the crook on his neck, breathing in his scent, for example. To inflict him with such a trial without having anything to eat on his birthday was the greatest injustice life could have gifted him.

But how bad could it be? They did it multiple times last year, and Claude had always managed; he just had to curl his arms around Dimitri’s waist and not lean too close, and if he was bold enough, his chin would rest on his shoulder and that would be all. That would be all unless his head would turn on its own, and with his temple against Dimitri’s and his ear so close, there was no way to tell if he wouldn’t test something stupid, like nibbing on his earlobe or hushing dirty truths, his voice low, his hands exploring what lied under his waist, or perhaps even his thighs-

“Claude?” In his wild daydream Claude had unfocused for a bit too long it seemed, and his mind got cleared as Dimitri threw him a helmet and put his own on. “You’re ready?”

Goodbye sweet words murmured in his lover’s ear. “Depending on where you’re taking me.” 

Dimitri’s eyes told him he was smiling since the helmet hid his mouth. “Then I guess you’re not! But trust me, would you? I am sure you’ll be delighted once it’s over.”

“Over?!” What on earth had Dimitri planned for his birthday ?

The ride wasn’t as bad as Claude had anticipated, since the torture of holding Dimitri without doing anything close from all the things he dreamed of doing to him got quickly overcome with the fear of the unknown, as he had no idea of where Dimitri was driving them, added to Dimitri’s more than sportive driving skills. Later when Claude recognized the area, the anxiety of knowing deep inside but not being a hundred percent sure how all of this was going to end pushed all his embarrassing thoughts away.

Derdriu was surrounded by cliffs. The highest was no further than half an hour ride, and this is where Dimitri brought him for his first paragliding flight.

“So? You like it?” They were both equipped from head to toes and had a monitor with them, and before they departed Claude couldn’t even turn his head to see what kind of face Dimitri was doing, for his eyes were fixed on the small part of the cliff that separated him from the void, literally.

“I’ll tell you if we make it both alive. Tell me, have you already done this before?”

“No!” Dimitri replied, his voice unaffected, as if he didn’t think a second it could be their last conversation - perhaps it was the best time to confess. “I kind of always wanted to try it with you. I thought today was a good opportunity.”

The wind was blowing so strongly Claude barely heard what Dimitri said, and figured it would be the lamest way to cry out his feelings, and that apart from his own monitor and a couple of birds flying their way, no one would hear it anyway. They ran to the cliff and jumped, and Claude had never screamed so much in his life.

The fear lasted perhaps a dozen of seconds, no more.

As soon as the paraglander floated and did not, well, fall, Claude calmed out instantaneously; flabbergasted by the sight in front of him and under his feet, his mouth agape, he remained silent and contemplated the view with the pleasant impression that all the air had been sucked out of his lungs but that he didn’t need any, not really. Rarely had he reached this level of serenity so quick, expect during exceptionally good archery sessions; when he dared to look to his side - it was not until a couple of minutes - he saw Dimitri with the same kind of wonderment on his face, and his blue eyes were sparking with sunlight and a rare sort of happiness that Claude had witnessed only a few times. The wind was blowing their hair in all directions, caring only their shouts to the other, but they just needed one glance to know what was happening in the other’s mind and heart, and they beamed with the knowledge.

Thirty minutes passed in the blink of an eye. When they reached solid ground the boys needed some time to catch their breath. They sat on a rock, facing the sea.

“That was…” Claude was still high on adrenaline and something else, he blamed it on the wind invigorating his skin, or perhaps on his heart beating a bit too fast still. All words were lost, they stayed on top of the cliff, they hadn’t jumped with them.

Silence was filled with the crashing of waves they were so used to, but harsher than the ones at home; yet the familiar sound was not enough to calm their nerves. Dimitri was not doing any better. His cheeks were reddened and he was still panting lighty, and more importantly his eyes had never been so clear, so blue, so mesmerizing.

For a second Claude thought he could look at them without flinching. For a second he managed.

And then Dimitri stared back and heat rose to his cheek, and his own green eyes shone with the same kind of adoration he had seen in Dimitri’s while they were flying. They had flight together. ‘ _My first was always going to be with you.’_ Claude was high on adrenaline and something else he was starting to see more distinctly, something like the hole in his chest which was dragging him closer to Dimitri, like anything walking on Earth was attracted to its centre, and before he noticed Claude had taken Dimtri’s hand in his and he was staring at his lips.

And when he looked up, ashamed of what he did, he saw that Dimitri was staring too. 

His hand remained there then, and nothing could be heard but his heart beating in his ears, as if the sea had gone silent to respect their intimacy, a necessity to have enough courage to cross the line between a friendship solid and pure as a diamond, and something none of them had any notion about.

The unknown, the alternative world where Claude kissed Dimitri and they were friends no longer, would have to wait, because contrary to the sea, which had had the decency to grow quiet just for them, Judith and Tiana arrived at this critical moment with coffee, milk, and bread, and broke the magic of the moment with such enthusiasm that they failed to see the beauty and importance of what they interrupted.

“Boys! How was it!?”

They mistook what the crimson blush on their cheeks was made of.

  
  
  


#### 8 - Heritage

The presence of so many adults in the middle of their awakening moment - which fell flat like a soufflé after the interruption - was promptly explained by the emplacement of Dimitri’s bike, which of course stayed on the cliff while they went down, and they needed someone to drive them back up there to retrieve it. Tiana thought, after seeing her son so distraught by the absence of food this morning and what laid ahead of him, that he would be famished and would welcomed her with a bright smile and hug. So of course, she was puzzled by his lack of appetite, but Judith reassured her that it was usual to have this sort of reaction after a first fly. They did not question why Dimitri was so prompt to get on his bike and drive to the house while they returned to the hotel, where another surprise awaited Claude, and for their defense Claude barely noticed how Dimitri never looked at him for the entire ride. He was still completely out of it when they returned to the Almyra and didn’t even question what Hilda was doing here this early until Judith gave him her gift.

Hilda’s smile didn’t mean anything good, and he was forced to get it back together. “An earring?"

“It’s a tradition. Boys in Almyra are given an earring when they turn fifteen.” Judith told him.

Claude turned to his mother. “But Dad doesn’t have any?”

“He was not even fifteen when he crossed the sea. To be honest, I’m not even sure he knows about this.”

Eventually Claude stared at the nasty object Hilda had in hand, with which she was about to drill a hole on his earlobe.

“I guess I have no say in this.” He said.

“Of course you have. You can admit you’re a chicken and back off. I’ll tell everyone in town.” Hilda replied.

Claude sighed; it couldn’t be anything worse than this mortifying moment with Dimitri, which memory of was only getting worse as he recalled everything he did when he was not back to himself and part of his brain was still flying high. 

The pain was there, but it was short. The earring was made of gold; Judith brought one for his father as well, which got pierced a couple of hours later. This harmless gift would hold more than just the physical embellishment, which none of the men needed, and starting this day Bilal and Claude would have opened conversation about what Claude’s father remembered of Almyra, even suggesting that when everything would be over here and the island safe, they should visit his mother and Claude’s grandmother together. 

Even if Judith told him he could change as it pleased him, Claude would never take it off.

  
  


#### 9 - Makes me want to blow the candles out just to see if you glow in the dark.

The evening arrived quicker than Claude thought - it was becoming an universal rule it seemed, that whatever Claude wanted time to go faster or slower, it went for the exact opposite. 

“You okay?”

They held the traditional party at the Blaiddyd’s and Claude, for the first time in his life, didn’t want to go - or at least a part of him, the one which got stuck with his hand on Dimitri’s and his eyes on his lips. When he closed his eyes he saw them, and then the way Dimitri avoided his eyes after his mother arrived. He hadn’t touched his phone the whole afternoon and had probably missed a couple of calls and birthday messages, but it was better than to see he had a message from Dimitri, excusing himself for his behaviour or worse, no message at all.

Hilda saw his distress as they walked along the beach. They couldn’t go back - how could they, he was the birthday boy!

“Something happened.” He told her the whole story. She seemed delighted with something he couldn’t grasp. “What’s so funny about my misery? How am I supposed to face him - gosh I’m not even sure I can look at him anymore!”

“You’re being over dramatic. If Dimitri is a normal person, he’ll act as if nothing had happened at all. He won’t mention it.”

Claude groaned, “Dimitri is _not_ a normal person!” He’d probably go straight to him and apologize for whatever he thought he had done wrong - running away, not saying a word; Claude could practically _see_ him say ‘Claude, my dear friend, I am mortified by my own behaviour. I had for an instant a weakness and had stared at your lips for a second, but I noticed you captured this moment with your very own eyes, and have little excuse to present you. I was probably perturbed by our flying session and thought you the most beautiful creature in the world, feelings that are unfit for the most precious friend you are to me but be reassured, this moment has long passed, and we can be the best of friends again, so long as you don’t hold any grudge against this mistake of mine.’

“Anyone is normal as soon as first crushes are concerned,” Hilda said with a sort of wisdom he didn’t know she possessed. “If he behaves as you foresee, then it means he probably never saw you as anything more than a friend. On the contrary, if he does as anybody else with a semblance of self preservation and the awkwardness of our teenage years would do, and pretends nothing is wrong and nothing serious happened at all, you can be sure he is thinking about it as much as you are.”

Despite her good argumentation, Claude decided he’d rather be stubborn and prepare for the worst than being convinced into something he didn’t believe. “I’d ask Yuri. He’d know better.”

“Oh, he can’t come tonight. Hasn’t he told you? He tried to call you all afternoon.”

But Claude had forgotten to look at his phone for the entire day, and left it in his bedroom. This pilled all the things that let him mortify for more than a day as he realized his behaviour was nothing but childish, and that he was going to ruin everyone’s party if he tried to avoid Dimitri anyway.

And Dimitri must have had the same reasoning because he acted exactly as Hilda predicted, and welcomed him with an easy smile and a hug, and Claude forgot how to breathe for an instant.

The party was nice, as always; Sylvain was drunk before they ate the cake and blew the candles instead of Claude, almost vomit on the piano - that’s when Ingrid, Dorothea and Edelgard dragged him on the Beach, where he stayed the whole night, and Felix checked on him from time to time. Some members of the chess club and the archery club made it till midnight. Linhardt surprisingly was one of the last people who stayed awake, as he was passionately explaining some scientific thesis with Hapi and Dimitri and that’s how near two in the morning, Claude found himself alone with a drink, his back against the table filled with forgotten plastic cups - some had their contents split on the floor - and facing the patio. From there he would see the beach, enlightened by the moon, and if he concentrated he could hear the waves hitting the shore, just like this morning, just before-

“So, how was flying?”

Edelgard had miraculously materialized next to him. He choked on his drink - it was Jager Bomb, it was disgusting - and cleared his throat before replying, “I don’t think there’s a word for it. Definitely amazing. I highly recommend it.”

“Dimitri said exactly the same. I have to admit you got me curious. It really seemed...quite something.”

“I’m not sure my description does it any justice. I’m curious now, what exactly did Dimitri tell you?”

“I told you, not much. But the way he looked when he came back…” She said that while her eyes were looking for him in the crowd, and Claude held his breath, “He looked, I don’t know. Different. As if something had happened to him and opened his eyes on something.”

Claude held his plastic cup a big tighter and some of the content fell on his shoes. Edelgard was polite enough not to mention it.

“Are you two alright?” She asked out of the blue.

Claude was glad he didn’t stammer. “Yes. Why wouldn’t we?” As perilous as it had been, Claude hadn’t avoided talking to Dimitri, they took pictures together - with Dimitri’s phone, of course - and to his knowledge at least they hadn’t behaved anything different from their usual antics.

“I was just...I’m so used to seeing you tied to the hip that when you’re not...Excuse me if I-” Edelgard waved to the crowd; when Claude looked up, Dimitri was coming their way. “It seems I was wrong.”

The three of them had what Claude would recall to be a pleasant chat and which reminded him of a most carefree time in his life, before any of them grew up, when everything was easy and Claude didn’t know there were four type of blues in Dimitri’s iris, or the way his muscles felt against his palms. Claude finished his drink before he knew it, and by the time he got them another round, Dimitri had to help Felix to get Sylvain inside - it turned out they failed - and Hilda dragged him along with Dorothea and Ingrid, who seemed to have only two topics in mind : ‘La Casagranda’ and the upcoming concert.

“It’s a shame you’re not playing this year.”

“It’s a miracle you got Linhardt to play.” Claude replied. He had a feeling adding a bit of drums and having Caspar around helped him quite a bit.

“You’ll be able to enjoy the music and dance a bit ! Why don’t you practice now by the way?” Hilda proposed, and then she winked, and Claude had a feeling it was one of her catastrophic ideas and that he should run far, far away from it. “Ingrid, didn’t you say you wanted to dance?”

“Yes, I did…” Ingrid was as puzzled as Claude was and she was sober, which told a lot about Hilda’s suspicious scheme.

“Come on, we’ll tag along!” Hilda took Dorothea by the arm and went to the stereo. “Let’s put something...oh, this one!”

‘I believe I can fly’ played in the living room.

Before he was dragged along Hilda whispered to his ear, “I told him you like blonds.” And all of Claude’s muscles tensed, what had she done!? “If he’s normal, he’ll see. If he likes you, he’ll be jealous.”

“Are you drunk?!”

Hilda giggled as a reply, which was enough for an answer.

They had reached that part of the night when Claude had troubled walking straight, and since he hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to practice dancing, he found himself quite clumsy with Ingrid, who treated him with a lot of patience and comprehension. “I’m used to it. Sylvain is so much worse.” She said, and suddenly everything made sense.

As they danced, Claude tried not to step on Ingrid’s feet, but was forced to admit defeat. Next to them Hilda and Dorothea were killing it and he felt jealous that his friend had such dexterity with so much alcohol in her veins, but his frustrated didn’t last long - after all, he was quite tipsy himself - as he saw that Edelgard had joined their group along with Dimtiri, and that as they danced together Dimitri was staring at him.

Or seemed to. In his state and at this hour, it was difficult to make the difference between what he saw and what he wanted to see.

If Hilda danced until a neighbour called the cops and Sylvain, then Felix, had dealt with them, Claude and Ingrid decided to call it a night in a common agreement, and Claude promptly escaped to the kitchen to grab a glass of fresh water and space, a safe place to think of all that had happened today.

He woke up with Dimitri’s engine, they were the best of friends and he had no idea of his growing feelings; now Claude had little doubt that his ugly secret had leaked to the only person he would have wanted to stay ignorant to it, but was still unsure about Dimitri’s behaviour and what it betrayed of his own feelings. As Yuri told him, he couldn’t form a complete opinion on the matter if he weren’t aware that Claude liked him more than in a friendly way, but Claude was just not ready to risk their friendship for something so unsure and unstable as love, as he had read about so often. 

His trail of thoughts was promptly interrupted by the object that caused him much turmoil. Dimitri seemed as surprised as he was to find him here, his hands on the kitchen table, his chest almost bending over, as if he was going to be sick. Which was what he thought at first; he rushed to him and Claude was too struck to move before Dimitri’s hand found his back. It was warm, he leaned in the touch, and this was when things became awkward again.

Surrounded with their friends they had no problem to pretend; now that they were alone, no one could distract them, and their thoughts naturally came back to the paragliding and what happened just after, to hands that touched, to looks that shouldn’t have stare, to eyes that shone too much to have nothing but pure intends in them. Claude was glad alcohol coloured his cheek earlier in the night and had then a present excuse for his state of flusterness when Dimitri was standing so close, but he knew Dimitri never drank, and was scared to extrapolate on the heat that rose on his pristine face.

The air was tense and he hated it. They had never been awkward since the day they reunited on the beach, and it was more than ten years ago. Claude couldn’t find a word to say that would not make the atmosphere worse, his mind was full of stolen glances and will to reach, to touch him, to ask if he saw him dance and had been jealous, if next time he wanted to dance with him, or if they should skip it and go back to what they were doing before his mother arrived, and hold his hand, and lean, shoving his back against the fridge and kiss him. Nothing coherent came out in time; Dimitri had gone to the faucet and refilled the carafe, and exited the kitchen before he had the time to breathe.

Claude let out a breath. He wanted to cry.

“You’re not staying?” Edelgard asked him as she saw him literally running away to the Almyra. In a rare moment of lucidity Claude realized he’d have to sleep in Dimitri’s bed if he were to stay, and it was out of the question - sleeping with him would be a pure torture, and sleeping in his bed without him was even worse.

Of course, Edelgard knew that. Claude coming back to his bedroom was admitting defeat, it was running away from Dimitri. “I’m feeling sick. I wouldn’t want to throw up in Dimi-”

“The secret,” Sylvain somehow had resurfaced, held by Ingrid and Felix, and had a glass in his hand. “Is to throw up before going to bed. If you do that-” Ingrid hit his side and he winced, and then Felix dragged him inside.

“It’s a blessing their parents switched rooms. I don’t know how we would have manoeuvre Sylvain to the Almyra.” Edelgard remarked. “How about you? Are you well enough?”

“Oh, I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me.”

“But you just said you were feeling sick.”

She turned her head, Claude panicked - he knew before she even said the name what she was about to do.

“It’s going to be fine, El, I promise I’m just-”

“Dimitri!” she shouted, “Could you walk Claude back to the Almyra?”

He was so close to spit the beans on the spot, to tell her being next to Dimitri was making him sick, that he loved him more than he should, that they couldn’t stand in the same room alone anymore because of his stupid crush and lack of restrain and that he was sick of it, sick of himself, and the only thing he wanted to do right now was to climb on his bed and cry under the blanket, and mourn the best friendship he would ever had, and which he sabotated on his own.

Dimitri appeared immediately and rushed to them, “You’re going already?” The barely hidden disappointment in his voice broke what remained of Claude’s heart. “I can give you my bed and sleep with El if you’re feeling unwell-”

“No really, that’s fine. The result would be the same, I don’t want to dirty your room.” That was way more humiliating to say than what he had imagined, but it was still better than staying here. “I’ll be fine on my own.” He wanted to be on his own.

But a couple of steps on the sand proved him he would have some difficulties reaching his destination. In the blink of an eye, he felt someone holding his arm and side, and Dimitri was walking with him.

There’s a blank in Claude’s mind from this point on and his next memories are of himself, in his pijama, going to bed. Along the way he couldn’t remember if they talked about what happened at all, but he had heard Dimitri’s voice, he was sure of it, and he hadn’t sounded angry, only disappointed to have him gone so soon.

Perhaps he wanted to talk, Claude thought a second, before the light from his cellphone chased the idea away.

‘Have you lost your phone?’ He remembered now, Dimitri had asked about this. And indeed, Claude had perhaps fifteen missed calls, five from Yuri, the rest from his friends and family - he should call his grandma tomorrow, she would really be pissed if he didn’t - and two were from Dimitri. Disinhibited thanks to the alcohol, Claude was not so scared of reading his missed message, and what possibly his friends had wanted to tell him when he had been unable to hear them.

He checked Yuri’s message first. Happy birthday and excuses that he had an emergency. Balthus got into a fight and it was rather nasty. Holst had been involved, which explained why Hilda had heard of it, probably.

He replied immediately, or tried to, words were messy and a pain to write. He kept them shorts and straight to the point. ‘Hope u k. M drunk. C U 2moro.’

He skipped the rest and halted when he read Dimitri’s name on the screen. The first message was, as he had anticipated, a word of excuse for having ‘departed without saying a word, I hope your mother would not mind, and that your aunt didn’t find me rude.’ Claude smiled, typical Dimitri. The second one was perhaps a bit more cryptic, and Claude didn’t really understand the sense of it. But it ended with the dreadful ‘can we talk about-’ and Claude decided to erase it, pure and simple, in a drunk burst of honesty - he didn’t want to deal with it, so he made sure the message never existed. He could feign ignorance to have a better life.

His phone vibrated again, it was a message from Edelgard - she was the one who sent the first message that took him out of his torpor just a minute ago.

‘You came back safely? Dimitri told me you were really far gone. Told me you said lots of rabish.’

And of course he couldn’t remember half of it. Well, that was just like an erased message after all. Quite practical to get drunk at this moment of time.

The second one got him sober with a simple ask.

‘Do you have a crush on Ingrid?’

She must have had a drink too many as well to be as blunt as this. Internally he cursed Hilda and her so clever plan; if he gave this impression it is clear that Edelgard’s friends would think the same, starting by Sylvain and Ingrid herself. What a mess! He needed to clear his name as soon as possible.

‘No,’ he typed, too quickly, ‘It’s Dimitri I like.’

And he didn’t realize his most honest mistake when he closed his eyes and went to sleep, perhaps a bit lighter after he unconsciously confessed, but it sure got him screaming his lungs out first thing first the morning after.

  
  


#### 10 - The aftermath

From his bedroom Claude could see the progression of the stage where Dorothea and the rest of his old music classmates were about to sing in a coupleof days. It had been the talk the whole week, and even Judith promised she would make an appearance, since they figured out the paparazzi were after scoops about ‘La Casagranda’ remake, and not here to cause her any harm. The distraction was more than welcome. It had been two days since his birthday, and Claude had never been more lost. Long gone were the days of his carefree teenage years, and he so wished to be sixteen again.

Yuri had left town with Balthus. He got a call the day after his birthday, while he was still suffering from a mild hangover and a tremendous shame, the aftermath of his confession. Long story short, Balthus owed money, tons of it, to the bad people. It turned out Yuri knew some of them from the orphanage, and tried to settle it on his own. It didn’t turn out well, and without Holst’s help it could have been worse - Claude didn’t want to think what he would have done if he had lost two of his best friends in the same night. They had to leave until things calmed down, and Yuri hoped he’d be back for the concert so Claude could tell him all he had on his heart.

Unfortunately, he wouldn’t come back until late August, and the deed would be then done.

Concerning Edelgard, unlike the boys she went straight to Claude as soon as she saw an opportunity, and wormed the information out of him with more or less success, as Claude didn’t really know when it happened or how.

“I had a feeling.” She just said, which was at least for Claude, a bit underwhelming compared to the havoc inside his chest. “Did you tell him?”

“No!” Claude exclaimed, and the blush on his cheek ended to prove his point. “I don’t want to...I don’t know what to do, honestly.”

“But you started something, didn’t you? None of you are behaving like you should. I saw it at the party, and you were so uncomfortable when he had to walk you home - you didn’t even text him yesterday.”

“He didn’t either.”

Edelgard let out a sigh. “For some reason he thought he had upset you.”

Claude had no clear memory of what they talked about when Dimitri walked him back to the Almyra. He had to guess at this point, there was no way he could directly ask Dimitri - he was too ashamed and too scared of what he could find.

“And you won’t make the situation any better if you’re both waiting for the other to make a move. First, you need to fix your friendship.” Edelgard had rarely seemed so serious, which was quite something, “It’s too painful to see you walking on eggs around each other. You’re like an inseparable set.”

“And how exactly am I supposed to do?”

“Present an apology for a start. He was really worried about you yesterday. Whatever happened, he still cares a lot about you. Your feelings for him won’t change that anytime soon.” She tried to offer some sympathy by touching his arm, which had close to no effect at all - still, Claude was glad she tried. “The rest depends on what you want to do.”

Claude had had some time to think of the matter. “I have gone too far to back off now.” Every time they spent next to each other Claude ached for touch, he ached when Dimitri looked at someone else and no magic trick could take this away. There was no other solution than to follow this path and present a proper confession. The ball would soon be in Dimitri’s hand. “I’m just so scared that everything we have…” He turned back to Edelgard, “It’s not only me and Dimitri. It’s the three of us. It’s all our friends. I don’t think anyone would be happy if we suddenly stopped talking to each other - what would my parents think?”

“You shouldn’t worry about anything but what you need, Claude. We’re all adults, well almost - I won’t count Sylvain.”

“Me neither.”

Edelgard laughed quietly. “What I mean is that, yes if you were to cut ties completely with him, it would have big consequences on everyone, probably; but it doesn’t have to be like that. I didn’t know you were so pessimistic. Perhaps he likes you?”

Claude smiled bitterly. “You would have already told me if he did.”

“Maybe what you did at the party started to open his eyes then. What if-”

They were interrupted when Dimitri entered the living room along with Felix and Sylvain, ready to go to the beach. Both Claude and Edelgard got off the piano seat. “Oh, you’re ready. Let’s go then!”

All exchanged polite smiles and had a pleasant afternoon, as long as they all stayed together. Claude could feel his stomach turned into knots every time they were left more or less alone with Dimitri, which Edelgard did at least twice on purpose - she whispered ‘go talk to him’ too many times not to be a coincidence. 

At the end of the day he had to admit she was right, like most of the times. They couldn’t go on like this. Even if Dimitri were to turn him down, it wouldn’t mean the end of the world, and they would probably still be friends. It would pass; after he would be certain Dimitri never returned them, his feelings would vanish like foam on the shore. Claude would feel the stupidest man when the next Summer would come, and seeing Dimitri smiling back wouldn’t let him lovestruck and beaming on the spot, and he would probably say that he had been a fool to have been such a pain for everyone, and to have feared their friendship couldn’t prevail the effervescence of a teenage love.

Claude ate at the Blaiddyd and when it was dark enough to go back, he asked for Dimitri to walk with him. He thought he saw Edalgard thumbed up under their father’s back and quickly hid a timid smile; he didn’t want Dimitri to misinterpret anything anymore. He needed to stop faking, what was he scared of? It was Dimitri! He would never cause him harm. Never.

“I truly need to apologize, for, you know.” He waited a bit, but if anything Dimitri only looked puzzled, as if he had no idea of what Claude was talking about - or he became better than he thought at faking. “At the party. I drank too much. I was...not really myself.”

“I can understand why you would be sick during the party, but it doesn’t explain why you ignored my message the day after.”

Ah, there was that too; nonetheless, these reproaches were like music to Claude’s ears, and the first true words Dimitri spoke to him since they parted. It was the first step to their healing. “I was ashamed because I couldn’t remember what we talked about before I went to bed. El mentioned I upsetted you; is there something we should discuss?”

Claude saw how Dimitri curled his fists into balls from the corner of his eyes, “...No, I mean, it was nothing but drunkard rabish, I guess. I’m used to it from Sylvain, but hearing it from you...I was not prepared for it.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful next time.”

“Do you...do you do that often?” Dimitri asked.

“What? Partying and getting drunk? No, be reassured, I behave when you’re not here.” Claude sent him a wink, which he regretted immediately after, and he was glad the night hid the blood rushing to his face. But it was good, it was progress, they were slowly going back to their old selves. Dimitri laughed, it worked, they were fixing it, they were friends again. “It was my first black out and it’s terrifying when you think about it. I’m glad you were the one with me. You have my absolute trust.”

Dimitri halted on the shore. Not because of his words, Claude guessed, but because of the spot - it was the place they always stopped at, where they spread Isabella’s ashes. Dimitri had his melancholy back on his face, which Claude devoured in the darkness, and the waves hitting the shore reminded him of their stolen moment the other day. How much different he looked now; Claude wondered who else had the chance to see him so down, so vulnerable but him and perhaps Edelgard, and to know he was gorgeous all the same.

Yet it was disheartening that they had such different thoughts at the very same moment, and to know that when eventually Dimitri looked back at him, his eyes weren’t shining for him.

The ache was still there in the palm of his hand and it begged for Claude to take Dimitri’s, to hold him in his arms and erased all the sadness he had ever felt in his entire life; and he wanted to hush into his ear ‘hey, it’s okay. You’ll never be sad again. I promise you.’ But these were nothing but empty promises, for Claude had no power on a tragedy that happened so long ago and which would never be forgotten, and nothing would ever replace the hole Isabelle left by dying so soon, and so unfairly. Claude realized at this moment that he wanted to be this, exactly, be everything Dimitri would ever need when he would feel sad, be the hand he needed to hold, the shoulder to cry on, to be his everything in the storm, and for their bond to last forever.

“Hey, Dimiti” he spoke softly to catch Dimitri’s attention, to tear it away from these unpleasant memories. “Let’s go home.”

The back of his hand brushed past Dimitri’s and that was it. Claude didn’t go any further than that, he didn’t need to. And if Dimitri had looked back a bit more puzzled than if he hadn’t done anything, thus acknowledging the soft touch, he didn’t say a word, didn’t show it displeased him. They walked back to the Almyra in a comfortable silence. They parted with a warm smile, and the awkwardness was gone.

  
  


#### 11 - Cornerstone - part 1

Claude was standing in front of the stage he had played on the year before. Dorothea told him they were going to play ‘9th of March’ again but with a new arrangement; it was certainly an improvement, but he would always have a preference for the version they played, the one Edelgard made the piano part. In a couple of hours, the beach would be filled with hundreds of tourists and some of his friends, and Dimitri would be here as well. On his right, the bar was finally done, and he could read the menu from where he stood. Sylvain proposed they stay the whole afternoon here, but the girls wanted to ‘get ready’ - for what, Claude wondered, and when he asked Hilda later she sticked out her tongue and called him _stupid_. His father needed some help at the hotel anyway. 

Hilda was waiting for him at the reception when he was done.

“So? How does it look?”

“The exact same as last year.” He looked at his phone and smiled, ‘What time?’ Dimitri sent, and he typed a reply before staring back at Hilda. She was beaming, “Yes, it was him.”

“You’re in love.”

“No I’m not.”

“You objectively haven’t looked at your face in a mirror when you think of him.”

Claude humoured her by dramatically rolling his eyes; since they had the same discussion every day or almost since March, he was short of clever comebacks - and Hilda made sure to ignore each one of them anyway, so why bother? He was glad he had listened to Edelgard’s advice and talked to Dimitri before tonight; the concert looked amazing, and to be honest Claude had missed Dimitri during his birthday party. It was the perfect opportunity to fix the loss he felt and even dreamed of something better, if he were to be bold enough.

“So, what are you going to wear?”

Claude looked at her, puzzled, “Hm, I was thinking perhaps, clothes? What do you think?”

Hilda choked. “I mean, seriously. You’re going to go like….that?”

By that she meant with a denim short that let half his trunk in sight - it had deer’s head all over and Claude adored it - and oversized white T-shirt with a peace sign in pink covering half the front, which was his basic outfit for every day of summer. “Perhaps I’ll put on a hat,” he said, to Hilda’s despair.

“Look. If you want to impress him, you need to-”

“I already thought about it.” Claude cut her, “Since you told him I had a thing for blond he might still be persuaded that I want to go out with Ingrid so I thought that if I overdressed, he’d get the wrong idea again.”

“But how are you going to get his attention?”

“Hilda, we’re best friends, I’ve known him all my life. We used to take our baths together.” Claude walked to the counter as the phone was ringing. “I’ve seen him naked more than his own mother. Clothes aren’t important for us. The Almyra, Claude Von Riegan speaking.”

They joined the rest of the group when their shift ended at eight. Dorothea, Linhardt and Caspar were supposed to play in half an hour, but it seemed there had been some technical problems and the stage wasn’t ready.

“I hope we’ll have enough light to read the partition.” 

Dorothea was simply breathtaking. She had a deep red dress that enhanced her curves and a matching make up, which would probably make Yuri jealous - Claude made sure to take a picture to show him when he’d be back. Caspar had put on a suit himself and it seemed Linhardt had been forced to put one on as well, but had to idea how to wear it. Thanks to Dorothea and Hapi though they avoided a small fashion catastrophe, even if Linhardt didn’t seem to mind a second. Sylvain and Felix joined them with drinks in hand and the music from a local band started playing - rock band, nothing too sophisticated, but which alas prevented them to have any kind of constructive conversation.

Dimitri was wearing a pristine white shirt Claude had never seen before that looked way too warm for a night of July, and which would look even more devine with a bow or a cravat. He had the first button opened, leaving his collarbone free to be seen by anyone who would be lucky enough to stare his way and suddenly Claude’s mouth felt dry. It matched perfectly with his already tanned skin, and emphasized his silhouette and stature, his broad shoulders and slender waist, and Claude wondered how it must feel to design clothes so that people would only want to take them off from their owner, and thanked to heaven for whoever gave it to Dimitri so he could wear it tonight.

“Looks like someone overdressed.” Hilda was staring the same way, somewhere in between Dimitri’s pecs, and a glass of cheap wine in hand that she probably shouldn’t be drinking. “Aren’t you feeling stupid now?”

“No, I’m feeling lucky.” He said with a smile, and stole her glass before drinking it all.

“Hey!” She hit his shoulder. “Someone offered it to me!”

“Who?”

“...Sylvain.” She glared at him when he started laughing.

“Then ask him another. I’m sure he won’t mind.” He caught Dimitri’s stare in the crowd and they smiled. Ignoring Hilda’s complaints or death threats, he reached them with his empty glasses, and almost passed by Edelgard without noticing her. “Hi there.”

“Claude.” Dimitri seemed delighted and smelled of cologne; he really overdid it, just like Hilda said he should have. Was he trying to impress someone? Suddenly Claude got self conscious. “Are you thirsty?”

“Yes.” Absolutely, and not only for a drink. 

“El, do you want something?”

“I already have a drink Dimitri.” She said with a discreet smile, as she was looking at the opposite of where the boys were standing.

Dimitri acted as if he hadn’t heard anything. “What do you want?”

“A beer.” 

Dimitri disappeared to the bar where Claude saw Sylvain’s red hair, and Felix and Ingrid were nearby. He turned to Edelgard. 

“I am not leaving his side.” 

“He’s purely gorgeous.” She admitted. She was of course not bad herself, but it showed she had put less attention in his outfit than Dimitri did. “He’s not used to going out, you know. But I sincerely think he was trying to look good.”

“He always looks good.”

“But perhaps he doesn’t know it.” She took a sip of her limonade. “Or perhaps he wanted to be the most handsome guy in the crowd.”

Claude never left his progression until he reached the bar. “I’m sure someone already tried to touch his ass. I am _not_ leaving his side.”

“Scared someone would steal his attention from you?” Claude sent her a dark glare. “You’re so predictable. It’s kind of funny. You know, I’m certain it doesn’t occur to you that he could be doing all of this because of you.”

The way Claude’s eyes widened was a sign he didn’t.

“Perhaps he thought your attention would be stolen by someone else, and perhaps this very white and ridiculously expensive shirt our father gave him has only one purpose, to catch your gaze, no matter where you stand, so that you never lose sight of him.”

His heart beat stronger in his chest. “Perhaps.” He repeated, as to say it was not certain, and that he shouldn’t get his hope high. “Perhaps only.”

Deep inside Claude had yet one certainty : tonight he would have an answer, tonight they would part as friends, or as something more.

Dimitri came back with the rest of his friends. He handed Claude his glass, and all were surprised to see he had taken the same. “What? Is it me or are you having a beer as well?” Edelgard exclaimed.

“Ah, I’m afraid it’s all my fault.” Sylvain replied, as Dimitri looked down and sighed. “You should have seen him. A girl I was hitting on literally gasped when he arrived, and when she talked to him he couldn’t even say anything other than platitude! Seriously, Dimitri my friend, you need to loosen up, if you don’t, then your good looks would be for nothing.”

Claude hid a smile as he saw how embarrassed the talk made Dimitri. One would think of him as accustomed to being opening stared at - on the beach, for example, even if Sylvain’s good nature caught some stares from people checking out as well, little were those who ignored Dimitri - and seeing him shy all of a sudden with more clothes on made the scene somehow comical. Still, Claude was getting less and less reassured by the way things were turning, as the crowd grew larger, time flight with jokes and more beers when they found out Dimitri actually liked it, and the more the party went, the more he got closer to his friend, the more he made sure to never, ever, leave his side.

Finally nine o’clock came, and with half an hour of delay, Dorothea and the rest of the musical class appeared on stage. Their group hushed and listened to the songs they played; the whole performance was a delight, but what especially took everyone’s interest was Dorothea, assuredly, her voice and prestance, her technique and professionalism. She wasn’t kidding when she said she wanted to aim higher and gosh, she gave it all, and delivered with an astonishing ease. Claude wondered if some paparazzi were still lurking there, or some sort of scouts, because if they didn’t want her in the capital then, they had awfully bad tastes.

They were supposed to sing ten songs or less, Claude couldn’t remember, and most of them were slow. Sylvain, as expected, asked a couple of girls out only to be turned out. Claude’s heart was beating faster as soon as he saw a random girl walking to them, and each time his instincts prove him right: they were all coming for Dimitri, asking for a dance, and it would only be a matter of time until he finally said yes, pushed by Sylvain’s insistence. Hopefully, he had gone dancing with Ingrid, who got him in pity, and somehow Dimitri looked a bit less tense when he walked away.

When the eighth girl came Dimitri took a second too long to turn her down and Claude saw red. He had refused to dance with Hilda just to keep by his side and judging by the daggers she was sending him, he had to ‘get his shit together’ or suffer from the aftermath of her wrath for the rest of his life.

The song they played was one of the Beatles he could never remember the title of, and he took the opportunity of it not being awfully romantic to catch Dimitri’s wrist. “Come.” He said, before he realized what he was doing, he was dragging Dimitri away from their group in the middle of the improvised dance floor, and to his surprise, Dimitri followed without any resistance. His hand still firmly curled around his wrist, Claude wondered what to do next; it was rather evident that they were now supposed to dance together, even if Claude hadn’t asked for Dimitri’s permission. His fingers fell on the back on Dimitri’s hand. “That way they won’t bother you anymore.” he said without meeting his eyes, to hide the truth behind his words - that he couldn’t stand all these people trying to steal Dimitri away.

“Thank you.” Despite the music, his words were crystal clear to his ear, because Dimitri had leaned so close to it to be heard, and the sudden proximity ran a shiver down Claude’s spine. He could smell his perfume so well know that Dimitri’s neck was flirting so close to the tip of his nose, and if he were in a middle of a daydream he would probably nuzzle him right there and breathed in the scent, so unusual, that Edelgard thought Dimitri put on just for him. It smelt good, definitely, but not as good as Dimitri’s natural scent, and it was enough to make his head spin.

It didn’t get any better when Dimitri curled an arm behind his waist, and only then Claude remembered what they were supposed to do now; dancing. He let himself slide against Dimitri’s shirt, his eyes a moment lost on his collarbones, before he figured he had to put his own arms somewhere - they ended on Dimitri’s shoulders, and eventually their eyes met, and they had rarely been so close and so hot, that Claude was sure a part of his mind was melting away. Everything appeared so clearly, as if he hadn’t seen Dimitri in ages - the curve of his nose, pointy, the shape of his lips, his cheekbones so high, his strong jawline, all the things he had forbidden himself to stare at to keep a semblance of sanity were all presented to him all at once and it was more than Claude could bear.

It was impossible for Dimitri not to know then, how bewitched Claude was by him, and how little he needed to push him to break the thick line between friends and lovers.

“So, this is our last song!” The crowd whistled, but it was not enough to take Claude out of his bubble. “And I’d like to dedicate this song to one of our friends who made me discover it.”

Claude barely realized that Dorothea was singing the first lyrics of ‘9th of March’ with the new arrangement, and barely got the time to ponder if he liked the older version better. Dimitri had his arms strongly on his back and had started dancing, and Claude moved along, their eyes never leaving each other. It was like a moment suspended in time, and Claude would never watch a romantic movie the same way now: all these cheesy scenes, the longing gazes, the softest touches, he would never make fun of them again, not when he had known what it felt to be in Dimitri’s arms and to be held, to be wanted there, to be _desired_. 

He had little doubt now. The way Dimitri looked back left no room for interpretation, and even if the beers he drank, which he normally avoided, partially loosened him up just as Sylvain predicted, alcohol alone couldn’t create such radiant fire, nor the affection Claude saw in his eyes. So when Claude went on his tiptoes and brushed his lips against Dimitri’s he had little doubt he would be kissed back, and something in his chest exploded when Dimitri proved him right.

#### 12 - 9th of March 

In the middle of the flowering season

I suddenly think of the length of the day

In the midst of these busy days

I draw a dream of you and me

Sending my thoughts on the March breeze

The Sakura blossoms will take us to spring

Tiny dots of light overflow our way

Bit by bit warming up the morning

After a huge yawn

I blush a bit, laying by your side 

Standing at the entrance of a new world

The thing I realised is I'm not alone 

If I close my eyes

You're still there on the other side of my eyelids

I wonder how strong you've become

And I want to be that same way to you 

The windstorm that sweeps up the sand

And knots up all the hanging laundry

The white moon in the morning sky

Is somehow nice, it had me hypnotised 

Things can always go wrong, but

If you look at the sky, it seems so small

The blue sky always seems so well-put-together

The puffy pillow-clouds are moving along

As long as we all share the joy of waiting for the flowers to bloom, it'll be fine.

From here on, side by side

With a gentle smile

  
  


#### 13 - Cornerstone - part 2

During the year that separated Claude from the first thought of kissing Dimitri and the reality of it, he had time to go through a lot of possible scenarii, from the spontaneous rejection to lying on an empty beach at sunset - which was, more than being kissed back, purely impossible at this time of the year. Of course the eventuality of kissing Dimitri when their friends were still around came to his mind at least a dozen times, and Claude always thought he would feel self conscious about it; if he had had a choice, he would have made everything in his power not to find himself in this embarrassing situation.

It turned out he had been utterly wrong, for when their lips first met the rest of the world mattered as much as the TOP 50 or who the Prince of Fodlan was going to marry - they did not matter at all. And everything felt numb and unimportant but his lips, and Dimitri’s, and it was their first kiss and it tasted of beer but it was here, it was real, and a year before Claude would have never believed one of his selfish wishes could come true. His chest pressed on DImitri’s and his half opened shirt now, Claude pulled him for another kiss as soon as they part from the first, adjusting his angle as best as he could, and was rewarded when Dimitri leaned closer and groaned softly, his arms on his back going up, his hand soon lost in his hair.

The song ended while their lips were still sealed and they only noticed people leaving the dance floor when it was probably unrealistic to think no one had seen them. Claude had never felt this warm and light at the same time, as if his arms were made of plum and his legs of jelly. Shy for the first time that all this had been just a mistake or the beer and the general ambiance speaking, he couldn’t find the resolve to meet Dimitri’s eyes. His hands felt on his side.

“That’s all for us! Thank you, and keep hyped for the Black Eagles next concert!” Dorothea shouted, and both Dimitri and Claude looked back at the stage then - they hadn’t known the name of their band before, but for some reason none were surprised.

“It suits them well for some reason.” Claude said.

“If you say so.” And as Dimitri spoke their eyes mechanically sought for each other, and Claude took comfort in the pink of Dimitri’s cheeks and the clarity of his blue. “We should….go back to the others.”

“Yeah, we should.” Claude turned his heels.

“Claude,” Dimitri took his hand and it knocked the air out of his lungs. “It’s the other way.”

The walk back to their friends was a silent one. They held hands until Sylvain waved at them and Claude caught Edelgard’s smile. No one talked about what happened. It was impossible to say if they had seen, or cared, except perhaps for Edelgard who looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t, and the situation grew uncomfortable in the blink of an eye.

Claude’s hands were greedy. They brushed past Dimitri’s or on the small of his back, ignoring how Dimitri glared back - was he embarrassed or did he want more? - and soon Dimitri put his arm on his opposite shoulder and held him close, and Sylvain brought them more beers to enjoy. In their glee time ran out at the speed of light, and the need to kiss Dimitri again threatened to burst despite their friends’ presence, as Claude’s resolve was pushed to a corner between the alcohol in his veins and the way Dimitri _caressed_ his side. There was no way he wasn’t aware of what he was doing, which sent Claude on cloud nine - the kiss hadn’t just been a mistake then - but if he could wait for them to be alone, Claude would not mind as well.

An opportunity appeared as Dimitri proposed himself to get more drinks, which was a terrible idea to begin with with how much they got already - his mother was going to kill him if she ever found out, and wait, was Judith still here? - and Claude promptly followed. He grabbed his hand and dragged him out of the crowd behind the stage, where they found out he wasn’t the only one to have this brilliant idea.

Claude pinned him against a pillar. His mouth soon found the crook of his neck, and his hands the hem of his shirt.

“Claude. The others-” Dimitri was soon silenced by Claude’s mouth, hot and starving for his lips, his tongue daring to invade his mouth when Dimitri gasped and it was all he needed to shut him up definitely. They forgot their friends and the beers, and the rest of the party and did not exchange any words, alone in the world, behind the stage with the music hushed by their kisses and the angle of the stereo, and they kissed, they touched, they explored each other’s body that they thought they already knew by heart, only to be delighted to find out they still had so much to discover about the other.

When half an hour had passed in what seemed to be an instant, or only a couple of kisses, Claude wondered if he ever would be able to stop. Dimitri was even more addicting than he could have ever imagine, and to extricate himself from his embrace would be a pure torture. How was he going to survive an entire year without him?

His selfishness made him stop the kiss and ignore Dimitri’s complaint. He took his face in the palm of his hands, stared into the depth of his eyes, darker than what they usually were. The sight got him breathless. How could they have been just friends for so long? How did Claude resist, how did he stay ignorant to such bliss when it had been at arm’s reach his entire life?

(At this moment Claude felt he had all the power a man could ever possess in his hands. He felt invisible, gifted with an exhilarating strength only pure love could provide, which made any task seem feasible, and made mountains appear as if they were in fact not so difficult to move. Such intoxicating feelings of almightiness never came alone though, especially at such a young age, and if Claude felt anything he would touch would turn into gold, it was unfortunately not an absolute truth. Arrogance and vainglory walked the same path as his burning passion, and made him hurry beyond reason, eager that he was to obtain what he considered to be his, and had been forbidden to him for a time he considered to be too long.

So when he leaned and whispered, “We should go to your room,” into Dimitri’s ear, he didn’t look for Dimitri’s reaction because he thought he didn’t need to; after all, Dimitri kissed him back, he touched him, there was no reason he would say no now, right? He missed the fear, missed the apprehension, missed the uncertainty in Dimitri’s voice when he replied, “Okay,” in a whisper. He missed it all.)

They slept with their limbs tangled, their fingers entwined, wearing only their boxers - well, somehow Dimitri kept his shirt but it was wide opened, and when Claude woke up, his eyes fell first thing first a hickey he was the maker of, in the hole just above Dimitri’s collarbone. He stirred and yawned and then he realized where he was - what they did - and more importantly, what he said.

Dimitri was already awake, his eyes fixed on the ceiling and he was like frozen in place. The fire from last night was long gone, replaced with what Claude could only analyse as pure panic and his own stomach burned with shame and regret.

They should have perhaps talked a bit before they crossed that line. Not that anything life changing happened, they were rather unexperimented after all, but Claude remembered how big and hot Dimitri felt under his palms and how he groaned, and remembered how talking then had only made the situation worse.

He’d rather have never spoken those words.

“Hey,” Claude caressed Dimitri’s cheek with all the tenderness he possessed and more but it remained cold as marble. His eyes had turned from the warm colour of the sea to icy blue when he looked back and didn’t add a word, and Claude didn’t need any to feel he was unwelcomed here, and needed to leave immediately.

He collected his clothes in silence; rarely had Claude felt so wounded and mortified and _angry_ at everything, rarely had he been so ashamed to flee, like those one time things he saw in movies when the hero or heroin regretted what they did the night before.

This was the thought that never left him until the end of the year. In the light of days and entirely sober, Dimitri was ashamed of him.

But it didn’t make sense! He dressed nicely and put on some perfume and after the paragliding he had stared at his lips - had he read him all wrong from the very beginning?

He barely recalled bumping on Lambert when he got downstairs and exited the house by the living room. It’s only when he walked on the beach that he realized he had forgotten to take his shoes. But it was too hard to come back; his aching eyes told him he would not make it without making more of a fool of himself, and Claude decided that, at least for today, he needed a break.

His father welcomed him with a smile. “Claude! You slept over. Were you with Dimitri again? You could have told us, your mother was-”

He walked straight to his room and locked the door behind. Dimitri, Dimitri and him, why was everyone talking about them as if they were always together?! Claude was a fine person without him. He was fine the rest of the year when Dimitri wasn’t around, and he was certain Dimitri was enjoying himself so much with his rich friends, and they probably spent their weekend riding their expensive bike on the highway and paragliding on skyscrapers, which left no time to think of poor Claude in his yokel town, which he only went to because his father one day befriended the wrong person and bought the wrong house.

With his vision blurred Claude had trouble finding anything to ease his frustration - he wanted to throw something on the wall but not something that could break, and when his hand felt something soft under his palm he thought a cushion would be his best shot. But alas it was his plush, the dragon plush he had in hands when Dimitri first left him and broke his child’s heart, and this vibrant memory, the most painful one of all, finished what Dimitri’s rejection had started a couple of minutes ago.

He had been crying for half an hour when Tiana timidly knocked on his door. He did not open, but at least, it made the tears dry.

Hilda was the only one allowed inside his room, and it was so until the end of Summer.

  
  


#### 14 - Damage control

“He doesn’t talk to me about it. I’m not sure I can help this time.”

Claude offered a gentle smile; after all, it wasn’t as if he could blame anyone but himself, and he was so broken by his own pride and vanity that he hadn’t shared what he confessed to any of his friends. Edelgard was the first one to see the damage done, as she saw Dimitri in the same position Claude left him, his arms and legs spread on the bed and eyes lost. She also saw Claude shoes and brought them back to the Almyra where she talked with Sylvain, Felix and Ingrid, and none had any idea of what had happened, and Claude was still locked in his room.

To his surprise only a few people saw them kiss during the concert. Edelgard had guessed more than witnessed, and apart from Dorothea who was on stage, the crowd was too thick for any of their friends to follow their movement. Claude told Hilda the whole story until they reached Dimitri’s bed, and kept the rest to himself.

“And if Dimitri is doing the same, I fear we’ll be stuck for some time.” Dorothea took part in the discussion as she was the only person he knew who had seen the fateful scene, and could give an almost objective opinion - even if she adored Claude too much to be mean to him. “He seemed pretty much alright when I last saw him after our last song. Had he drunk much?”

“He kind of did.” Claude scratched the back of his head. How many beers did he have? Two, three?

“More like five or six!” Sylvain replied when he asked him later that day. He looked rather proud of himself, convinced he had succeeded in his only mission, which was to help his friends have fun and, if the stars aligned, get laid. His best reward was undoubtedly the huge hickey on Dimitri’s neck that he was so shy about. Suddenly a picture less idyllic appeared in front of Claude’s eyes, of a boy too in love to realize he was abusing his crush, by imposing his needs on Dimitri when he had been in no condition to properly give any kind of consent.

“I asked. He said yes.” He tried to convince himself, but the words sounded wrong and tasted sour. “What should I have done?”

And the answer was immediate, and it slapped him in the face with a truth his mind had always known but which his heart chose to ignore.

As the days went by at an agonising slow speed, Claude spent his days with his phone in hand, startled each time it vibrated, and part of his soul died each time the message he got was not from the one he begged for. Dimitri had gone silent. Edelgard couldn’t reach him. She concluded that he thought her too close to Claude to be of any help, and told Claude to try his chance with Sylvain or Felix - he hadn’t known Ingrid that well, from what she had observed, so she was probably out of the problem.

Considering their temper Claude figured out the best approach would be to talk to Sylvain, but how to reach out to him? The few times they crossed paths was at the Almyra during the morning, or when Claude was lending his father a hand. Perhaps waiting would be the best solution. After all, Dimitri would soon run out of excuses not to see him, and even his friends would notice.

Claude jumped when his phone vibrated again, but it was only Yuri. ‘Too bad. I wish I was there.’ He had no idea of when he would be able to come back and if Claude hadn’t been distraught by the whole situation he would have been worried sick; but Claude was just a teen and he had only one heart, and it could only be broken one at a time.

Suddenly it was the second week of August and the Blaiddyd were leaving in about a week. For some reason Claude had a feeling his relationship with Dimitri would never recover if they couldn’t at least talk to each other before they came back home, and the realisation grasped his lung, preventing him from breathing, preventing him from sleeping.

As he was tidying up the place at the end of another day spent at the Beach with Hilda and Marianne, and far from the rest of their friends, Claude caught snatches of a conversation that was certainly not meant for him to hear. It started with Felix.

“...no idea. Stop fucking around. He told you he didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Ah, you’re heartless with me, as always.” It was Sylvain who replied, it seemed the pair was alone. “You have always had more patience and care for him anyway.”

“That’s not true!” Felix used a tone that betrayed Sylvain was in fact right, and that’s when Claude halted whatever he was doing to concentrate on their conversation, having a feeling it concerned none but Dimitri. “You’re my best friend.”

“I know. And he’s-”

“Sylvain!” Felix groaned.

The sponge he was holding fell on the floor. Did Sylvain really imply that, or was it just Claude’s imagination?

“Are you alright by the way? Must have shaken you a bit. I hope you won’t resent me too much for that.”

“No. Your little jokes had nothing to do with it. It was inevitable.”

And Claude knew then what they were talking about, and that he had bet on the wrong horse - and had done so for so long. He had never imagined Dimitri would find comfort in Felix all of the people, and had failed to see how close they actually were since the very beginning - he hadn’t cared enough to see.

“Oh. So we’re finally here.” Claude held his breath. It itched to shove on them and shake their shoulders, asking to be less cryptic while he was eardroping. “Are you scared?”

Unfortunately the voices were getting nearer, meaning they would soon enter the entrance hall and see him clean the tables, and if he had guessed right and were talking about him, they would drop the topic at the first sight of his back.

Of course, Felix chose that moment to be exceptionally slow to reply. “I don’t know. I don’t think he knows what to do anyway. He’s-”

And Sylvain cleared his throat. “Claude! Long time no see.”

Claude pulled out his best smile, and was rather pleased with himself. “Sylvain, Felix.” he said, his voice joyful as usual. He didn’t miss how Felix stared at his feet, but sent him daggers when he thought Claude wasn’t looking.

As soon as he could he shared his finding with Edelgard, and felt a bit guilty to reveal Felix’s hidden crush, that she had no idea about - but who could have guessed with how abrasive Felix was, all the time? They both agreed on the matter quickly, and soon Claude had to come to term with the inevitable solution, the only one he got.

“Wait.” Hilda dropped her ice cream on the table and looked at him as if he had just said he had poisoned her lunch. “You didn’t text him _yet_?”

She was purely outraged. “And to say what? He threw me out of his room! How am I supposed to engage any kind of intelligible conversation?”

“He didn’t tell me that.” Edelgard said. “He told me you were gone before he had time to say anything.”

Hilda stared at him again as if she had lost all hope in humanity. Once again, Claude was mortified.

“I stared at him for a whole minute and he just looked...so scared!”

“And you overreacted.” Hilda concluded.

“I panicked, I admit. But I was not imagining things. He did not want me there, so I left.”

“Then perhaps he thought _you_ didn’t want to be here?” Why was Hilda so annoying all of a sudden? “Since none of you had the courage to talk about it, perhaps it is nothing but a huge misunderstanding and he’s actually thinking you regret kissing him.”

Claude swallowed hard. It couldn’t be the case. Not after what he said. His instinct never betrayed him, and this night Dimitri had felt trapped, and the more he remembered the scene, the more Claude hated himself.

Dimitri had been scared of him, perhaps for multiple reasons and most that Claude would gladly admit and repent, and Claude had been too scared of a possible total rejection to start the conversation.

But waiting and hoping his problems would resolve on their own was just driving them into a wall.

Claude took out his phone. Hilda held his hand. “You can do it.” She encouraged him as best as she could, and Edelgard did the same, with a hand on his shoulder.

Dimitri agreed to meet at their usual place. The hours before their meeting saw Claude curling into a ball on his bed, with the horrible sensation that he was either going to die or to burst with happiness, and that Dimitri had in heart in the palm of his hand, and could do anything he wanted with it without Claude resenting him.

  
  


#### 15 - Goodbyes.

The waves were hitting the shore, a constant lullaby for their children’s ears. To his surprise Claude didn’t arrive first; Dimitri was standing against the sea with a look so familiar on his face, and Claude bit his lips when he caught himself wondering if Felix already saw him like this, so vulnerable, or if what he thought were their alone were actually shared with half Fodlan’s population. He wanted to throw up already. His legs felt like jelly for all the wrong reasons.

“Hey.” He blurted out, more because he was afraid Dimitri would talk first, and say something that would hurt too much for him to reply - just ‘hey’ was a good start, it was a pacific start, a sign he wanted to fix things.

He got patient until Dimitri replied. His eyes were lost on the sea, he knew it could take a while. “Good evening Claude.”

That was awfully formal even for Dimitri. Claude felt his stomach drop at the bottom of his belly. “I’m sorry.” They couldn’t continue like this, stress was eating Claude alive, so much he didn’t recognize himself anymore. Was it okay to become such a mess, just because of one person? Probably not. Maybe Hilda had been right, maybe he was overreacting. “I’m so, so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Claude spoke quickly with his eyes on the wet part of the sand, that the waves sometimes tickled before going back to where they belonged. He missed the swirl of emotion his words had on Dimitri’s face, thinking none would suit him at best, or that his indifference or anger would make him even more miserable than he already was. But Dimitri was nothing but that.

“Okay.” He said after a while, which did not convey half of what he was feeling, and Claude let out a sigh. Suddenly he felt that his shoulders didn’t weigh a ton anymore, that he was able to move them as he pleased, that he could breath almost like a normal person - he looked up, hopeful for the first time this week, he had to know.

“Can we still be friends?”

He didn’t expect Dimitri to be so shocked by his ask. “Claude...of course we are. You will always be…” He curled his fists, the words he had in mind didn’t seem to please him. “I’m sorry I gave you the impression I wanted to cut ties with you.”

“You didn’t.” He overreacted. “I was a mess. I misinterpreted everything, rather badly. Like during the party I…” Claude swallowed to buy some time to think of the correct words - not the one Dimitri wanted to hear, but the ones that were earnest. “I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you. You were in no condition to give any kind of consent-”

“Neither were you.”

“This is not enough of an excuse for what I did. And what I said.” Which was, judging by Dimitri’s reaction, what troubled him most - and Claude couldn’t resent him for that, after all. “Why are you trying to defend my case?”

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to make sense in all this. I’m rather lost.” Dimitri stared back at the sea. “I thought coming here would clear my mind, help me focus on what I am truly upset about, what I am looking for, but even the waves don’t hold the answer this time.”

Claude had a feeling there was still a lot Dimitri hadn’t told him about his issues, and that more than him or Felix, the sea might have been his dearest confidant since the very beginning.

“Claude, you’re...we’ve known each other since we were born. You had always been a constance in my life, a pillar, I cannot imagine what life would be like without you.”

Yet Claude felt the fateful ‘but’ coming from miles away, and prepared for the impact.

“But I don’t think I share the same feelings...at least not yet.”

“Not yet?” There was nothing crueler in love than a ‘not yet’, to know a door might open or remain close forever. There was nothing crueler than hope.

“I told you. I’m lost.” 

And so was Claude; but if Dimitri had kissed him at the beginning of Summer he would have known how to react, he would have felt the fire under his skin, the passion on the tip of his lips, he would have kissed back twice as much. Love was not that complicated to recognize: it was there or it was not, and people who claimed the opposite were blind or hypocrites. It was perhaps the most simple thing to handle of all of it. Claude read somewhere that it took only three seconds to know if a person would be attracted to another, and as Dimitri had said earlier, they had barely been a time when they hadn’t known each other. 

“I need some time to think.”

If Dimitri liked him at least a ridiculously low percentage of how much Claude loved him, he would know. He would feel it in his bones, he would feel it when looking in the depth of Claude’s eyes, he would not need time to think. Fortunately or not, Claude had seen enough bad teenage movies to know that what Dimitri told him was just the most diplomatic way to reject someone without hurting his feelings, and a small part of him was glad that his friend was considerate enough to be indulgent. It didn't prevent the blow from hurting, despite Claude knowing it would come, despite the delicacy Dimitri put in his words, despite the fact that Claude was only seventeen and would fall out of love and would love again. But at this moment he was ignorant of that fact; worse, he considered it impossible to find happiness with someone else again when he had known what kissing Dimitri felt like, and the mere thought of having to think of someone else, or a _replacement_ , sickened him. 

'How long?' He wanted to ask. 'Do I even have a chance?' was what came next, followed by 'why did you stare at my lips then?' 'Were you jealous of Ingrid?' and, his favourite and most bitter 'were you also drunk when you decided to wear that stupid stunning shirt and put so much cologne?'. Had he been his own, regular, joyful and confident self, Claude would have certainly dared one or two, and definitely the last one. Instead he dropped his gaze, and barely said a word. "Okay." He surrendered, he gave up, he had already given up before he came to the beach - no, even before sending the text.

He wanted to keep what could still be saved. To prevent their unbreakable bond to be severed by an unlucky bet of his.

"We'll be leaving in a couple of days. I don't...I don't think I'll have my mind settled before we part."

"I don't expect you to." And he added a minute later perhaps, "It took me some time to come to term with it."

"Some time?"

"Couple of months." By turning his face away Claude hoped he successfully managed to hide the blush his confession produced, of how long these feelings had been lurking in the depth of his subconscious. 

"Is that so…" Claude nodded, his eyes still in the sand and his heart into this throat. "Then perhaps things would be clearer when we meet again next year." 

Claude felt himself smiling without knowing why. Did he have any reason to rejoice? Dimitri didn't love him. But he also said 'next year'. And anything could happen within a year. Claude almost learned a new language, Dimitri could learn how to love him back.

"Until then," Dimitri raised his fist, his eyes looked for Claude's, and waited to be stared back at, "I still want to be your friend. I'd rather cut both my arms than not be able to call you as such."

Claude let out a timid laugh. He raised his arm and bumped his fist against Dimitri's. "Of course. I wouldn't know how to walk in a world where we’re not friends."

"That is settled then." And for the first time since his birthday party, Claude saw him smile, truly, as if for him the problem had been solved and Claude's feelings pushed in a corner of his mind 'until next year'. They agreed to remain friends, which was what mattered the most, and the unpleasant introspection could wait, and life was happy again.

The thought alone should have driven him furious, purely insane. Claude had walked on the beach with his heart so weak and opened, to the point of feeling sick and all Dimitri had found to answer his earnest feelings was a pirouette, and not even an elegant one, a cheap magic trick, a postpone rendez vous - they would talk about it again in a year, and until then, Claude would have to wait and suffer in silence, that was the price for their friendship.

Yet all these violent thoughts were hushed by the simple touch of their skin, by the mere warmth of Dimitri's hand and the brightness of his smile. And Claude reflected for half a second on how much he must love him to be overwhelmed by so little, enough to forget the wreck he was in, and for which Dimitri alone was responsible, and on how it was as beautiful as it was terrifying.

This little fistbump left him with a bitter taste in his mouth, soon followed by the salt from his tears. Dimitri would never be a friend to him again. He adored him too much for that.

"Claude?" His voice showed concern. Why was Claude surprised, or even glad? Dimitri had the most gentle heart of all. He had always cared.

"It's nothing! I'm just happy this mess is over!" So how could he tell him the truth? How could he share his pains and sorrow, and admit he was already breaking the promise he just made?

They could never be friends like they used to. Even this early, Claude already had a feeling that there would always be a part of him in love with Dimitri, and that pretending to only be friends would kill him slowly over the years.

They parted on the beach the same way they usually met - they hugged, Claude hid his blush and pain, and then it was over. They saw each other again with the rest of the gang the day before they departed, and used all their energy to keep their goodbyes courtois, and hid their emotions too well - no matter the kind. Had Claude known it would have been the last time he would see Dimitri before three long years he would have certainly acted differently. 

As he said, a lot could happen within a year, and three made no difference.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid this is where things start to get a bit angsty

**Author's Note:**

> Updates will be every saturday if you're lucky!
> 
> Follow me [ on twitter ](https://twitter.com/doctor_queenie) !


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